The following chapter has been contributed by the author Feargal
Cochrane with the permission of the publisher, Cork University Press. The views expressed
in this chaper do not necessarily reflect the views of the members
of the CAIN Project. The CAIN Project would welcome other material
which meets our guidelines for contributions.
This chapter is from the book:

This chapter is copyright Feargal Cochrane (1997) and is included
on the CAIN site by permission of Cork University Press and the author. You may not edit,
adapt, or redistribute changed versions of this for other than
your personal use without the express written permission of Cork
University Press. Redistribution for commercial purposes is not
permitted.

Who are the loyalists of Ulster?..... They are loyal to Britain
yet ready to disobey her; they reject clerical tyranny yet oppose
secularism; they proclaim an ideology of freedom and equality,
except for Catholics; they revere law and authority, then break
the law.[1]

Unionist ideology contains diverse interest groups with little
in common other than a commitment to the link with Britain. While
this position remains relatively cohesive during periods of constitutional
crisis when they can articulate what they do not want (namely
a weakening of the link with Britain), the coherence of the ideology
begins to disintegrate when unionists are forced to establish
a consensus for political progress. The tensions created by conflicting
perceptions of their political environment and how they should
tackle these external forces were exacerbated by the realisation
that many unionists were committed to the Union for different
reasons. While some regarded it in isolationist terms, as a guarantor
of Protestant religio-cultural hegemony, others saw Northern Ireland
as simply another region of Britain which should be governed in
precisely the same manner as the rest of the country. These conflicting
perceptions of identity inevitably spilled over into alternative
political objectives, with the former group demanding the restoration
of legislative devolution based on majority rule, while the latter
advocated full political integration with the rest of the United
Kingdom. Between these two poles lay a number of other objectives
such as power-sharing, administrative devolution and various schemes
for regionalism which combined both legislative and administrative
features. The nett result of this multiplicity of objectives was
political stagnation. The emphasis placed on unionist unity precluded
any one objective - over and above that elusive goal of securing
the Union - being given priority. Although the DUP were unified
behind a coherent policy - majority, rule - the UUP were not prepared
to accept it. There were two main reasons for this: firstly, many
in the party found majority rule an unpalatable philosophy and
secondly, those who were not against it on principle realised
- quite correctly - that it was no longer a practical option in
terms of reaching a negotiated settlement with the SDLP and the
British government.

This chapter presents a critical review of recent academic literature
on Ulster unionism. The various hypotheses presented are tested
against the first-hand responses of leading members of the unionist
political community The narrative seeks to explain the dynamics
of the unionist ideology and the complex motivations which underpin
unionist political behaviour.

The seeds of modern Ulster unionism were sown after the 1798 rebellion,
when the liberal Presbyterian merchants of Ulster began a process
of rapprochement with the Protestant ascendancy and became
estranged from the Catholic population. Before the Act of Union
in 1800, the wealthy merchant class in the north-east of Ulster
resented their exclusion from political power and were envious
of the landed gentry who could instigate legislation detrimental
to their interests. The Act of Union, however, together with rapid
industrialisation and economic change in Ulster, especially the
growth of Belfast's cotton industry, contributed to a shift in
Presbyterian politics as their fortunes were now inextricably
bound up with the British economy. The decline in liberal sentiment
after 1798, due to the failure Of the rebellion, the anti-liberal
excesses of the French revolution and the realities of Catholic
political mobilisation, led to a shift in Presbyterian political
thought. Economic self-interest was an underlying force (though
not the only force) behind these changing political attitudes,
facilitating and in some cases causing a revision of traditional
allegiances. It is not an unusual law of political motion, nor
is it an illegitimate one, for individuals or ethnic groups to
follow what they perceive to be their own self-interest. Thus
the Presbyterians, who had sympathised with their Catholic neighbours
while they shared some of their legal and political difficulties,
gradually drew closer to the conservative Anglicans once these
had begun to dissipate.

A good starting point for examining unionism's historical legacy
and the extent to which environmental circumstances fashioned
its ideological identity is provided by Jennifer Todd. She has
commented that the unionist ideology is essentially an umbrella
organisation under which two distinct groupings exist. The first,
Ulster loyalism, sees itself primarily as a self-contained cultural
community with a secondary political allegiance to the British
state. The other strand is an Ulster British tradition which defines
itself as being an integral part of Greater Britain with a secondary
regional patriotism for Northern Ireland.[2] This group consider
themselves to be as British as natives of London or Sunderland,
with a fondness for their 'Irishness' which is akin to that felt
by those on the 'mainland' for their own regional differences,
such as the Cockneys in London or the Geordies on Tyneside.

This perspective was illustrated by the response of UUP councillor,
Michael McGimpsey, when he was asked to explain why he was a unionist.
It was put to him that his political philosophy appeared to be
a secular one based largely on a pragmatic assessment of the political
environment, a perception of advantage which concluded that the
Union was the best political vehicle to secure the economic prosperity
of Northern Ireland. His response provides a perfect illustration
of the Ulster British tradition, rejecting the subliminal belief
of his more radical unionist colleagues that Northern Ireland
is a self-contained nation.

As I see it, I'm an Irish Unionist. I'm Irish, that's my race
if you like. My identity is British, because that is the way I
have been brought up, and I identify with Britain and there are
historical bonds, psychological bonds, emotional bonds, all the
rest of it you know. I'm not so much anti-united Ireland as I
am pro-Union with Britain, and I would be quite prepared to take
a united Ireland tomorrow, if somehow the whole of Ireland could
have some form of Union grafted [on] . . . But to talk of independence
in Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland is not a country, Northern
Ireland is a province of Ireland and it is a province in the UK
and I think that the notion of a national identity or group identity
or racial identity or cultural identity here is a nonsense. We
have a particular ethos OK, but it draws so heavily from the Irish
and from the British that I think independence is a nonsense.
[3]

Todd builds upon her previous work in an article published in
1988[4] by identifying three specific aspects of Ulster Britishness,
the first being a cultural commonality and distinctive regional
identity with the rest of the people in Northern Ireland. The
second characteristic could be termed civic unionism, a celebration
of and commitment to state structures such as Westminster, the
monarchy, the health and education systems, even the physical
infrastructure. The Irish-Canadian academic John Wilson Foster
epitomises this strand within unionist thought in his contribution
to The Idea of the Union, a publication which bills itself
as 'a manifesto in favour of the constitutional link between Northern
Ireland and Great Britain'.

The constitutional union of the four portions of the kingdom
best expresses the historic and contemporary realities of my cultural
and ethnic kinship, as well as safeguarding the citizenship and
civil rights I wish to have the continued privilege of enjoying.
My pro-Union position does not of course erase the strong sense
of neighbourhood I feel with the southern Irish and with northern
nationalists, nor the many contexts in which I properly regard
Ireland as an unpartitioned island.[5]]

The third element of Todd's findings has been defined as a 'supremacist
aspect of some unionists' British identity',[6] a glorification
of the history of Empire and British military adventures (however
exaggerated or sanitised), and, as identified by David Ervine
of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP),a tendency at times to
'want to be more British than the British themselves'.[7] John
McGarry and Brendan O'Leary have stylishly summarised this aspect
with the comment.

It includes such attributes as proclaiming the merits of being
part of a great imperial power as opposed to a small independent
neutral nation; assuming British culture to be the acme of civilisation
and Irish culture to be the converse; asserting Protestantism
to be incontestably superior to Catholicism; regarding Britain
as the epicentre of liberty, democracy and justice by contrast
with benighted Ireland; and taking opposition to British institutions
as a sign of ineffable backwardness, amorality, immorality, or
cultural immaturity.'[8]

The Ulster loyalist tradition, meanwhile, is firmly rooted in
their Presbyterian ancestry, and the ideals and values which permeate
radical loyalist behaviour are heavily influenced by this historical
legacy. The environmental circumstances of the Presbyterian settler
community left an indelible stamp on their collective psyche which
has influenced their subsequent activity. Upon their arrival in
Ireland, the Scottish Dissenters felt isolated and vulnerable,
squeezed as they were between the orthodox Episcopalians in the
Church of Ireland and the sheer numerical dominance of the Catholic
Church, both of whom regarded Presbyterianism as heresy. In addition
to this the settlers were in a minority even in the nine counties
of Ulster, which created the feeling of physical and economic
insecurity. These environmental factors were naturally exacerbated
by political events such as the constitutional uncertainty which
surrounded the accession to the British throne of James II, an
occurrence which appeared to signal their downfall until William
of Orange's victory at the Boyne. This insecurity produced a desire
for independence and a siege mentality identified by Lyons when
he commented that 'The settlers who struck their roots in the
region, did so under conditions of maximum insecurity and this
insecurity became a permanent part of their psychology.'[9] In
later years, such insecurity proved to be a successful breeding
ground for the Orange Order, evangelical religion and cultural
isolationism within the Ulster loyalist community.

Recent academic literature tends to reinforce this observation,
with McGarry and O'Leary declaring that

. . . there has been a persistent Ulster 'loyalist' tradition,
which despite its self-description, is much less loyal to Britain
than the British unionists, and more equivocal about the national
identity of Ulster Protestants. They display 'settler insecurity',
and their primary imagined community is themselves. Their loyalty
is to the Crown, rather than Parliament, provided the Crown defends
Protestant liberties in Ulster.[10]

While the authors are broadly correct in their analysis, this
chapter will demonstrate that their sweeping generalisations about
concepts such as loyalty to the Crown and the dynamics of Protestantism
overlook important nuances within this section of the unionist
community.

Many contemporary observers, such as Garret FitzGerald, perceive
political Protestantism to be a dichotomy between moderates and
extremists. When asked to elaborate upon his Irish Identities
Dimbleby Lecture of 1982 in which he argued that unionism was
not a monolithic creed, he defined the difference in terms of
two rival groupings.

There is unionism and there is loyalism basically, the unionists
are mostly in North Down I think! There, there is an upper-middle
class who go into the army, go over to universities in Britain,
which is unionism; but when you go beyond that into so-called
loyalism, it is loyalty to Ulster not to the Union with Britain
and it is mis-described as unionism which causes a lot of confusion
for everybody. We can deal with unionism; loyalism is more difficult
to deal with, because it is divisive within their own community.[11]

FitzGerald's comments demonstrate an inability to appreciate the
complexities of unionist ideology. As shall become apparent in
the rest of this chapter, such a simplistic division hides a multilayered
phenomenon which almost defies categorisation. Todd has emphasised
that the competing political agendas of the Ulster loyalist and
Ulster British traditions have been central to unionism's development
as a reactive ideology, capable of describing what it is against
- for example Home Rule, the Anglo-Irish Agreement or the Frameworks
Document - but incapable of articulating a positive political
programme without destroying the fragile coalition of separate
interest groups contained within it. In Todd's analysis, therefore,
the central anomaly of unionism is the group solidarity and political
strength of unionists when faced by an external enemy and their
corresponding weakness during periods of relative stability, witnessed
by their inability to develop a consensus over core principles
and political objectives. The Rev. Martin Smyth was asked whether
the unionist protest against the Anglo-lrish Agreement was hampered
by the multiplicity of objectives enshrined in the differing cultural
perspectives of unionists such as Ian Paisley and John Taylor.
Smyth conceded the point when asked if political progress was
made difficult by the fact that every time unionism tried to move
forward, everybody wanted to go in different directions.

I do, I think that is one of the difficulties as I've said
in two gatherings over the last weekend. I had asked the folk,
'if you were Jim Callaghan or if you were John Major, what would
you do?' Going back to the time during the Convention [1975],
when I was carrying on discussions with [John] Hume and [Paddy]
Devlin after the Convention, and we were having a reasonable rapport,
I'm not saying complete agreement but a reasonable rapport, and
then for their own purposes, some DUP folk went mad, and that
meant that Callaghan had to deal with the problem. 'Oh, do I go
down this road' where, using the worst possible scenario, a third
of the people . . . didn't want to be British. Then out of the
two-thirds, there was a division. 'What would you do?' So you
just, 'when in doubt, do nowt'. So yes, I have no difficulty in
accepting that has been one of the difficulties in getting progress.[12]

The role of fundamentalist evangelical religion is a key feature
of radical unionism and is central to its reactive nature, the
political subtext of such Bible-Protestantism being that the enemies
of today have remained unaltered from the enemies identified during
the eighteenth century. Liberalism such as that represented by
the ecumenist movement is regarded by this tradition within unionism
as a movement designed to make Ulster Protestants compromise,
not just in their political habits but in their spirituality as
well. This fear of liberalism and compromise can again be seen
in terms of unionism's historical legacy, in that the battle between
the 'Old Light' and the 'New Light' dramatised in Belfast by Henry
Cooke and Henry Montgomery in the nineteenth century is still
being waged today. This was brought into sharp focus in December
1982 when a Presbyterian minister in Limavady, the Rev. David
Armstrong, was attacked for allowing a Catholic priest to deliver
Christmas greetings to his congregation. Wesley McDowell, Limavady's
Free Presbyterian minister, castigated Armstrong upon his arrival
for being 'a charismatic, a compromiser, and a Romaniser'.[13]
This perspective has created a political and philosophical rigidity
within radical unionism (a less problematic definition than 'royalism')
where politics is seen as a struggle to maintain socio-cultural
hegemony and religious liberty. As external political motivations
have remained constant in this analysis, the way to achieve political
success is seen in terms of what worked in the past.

The following extract from a discussion between Clifford Smyth,
a former DUP activist, and Dr Gordon Gray, a leading Presbyterian
theologian, which took place outside a World Council of Churches
conference in Geneva, illustrates the tendency for 'religion'
to militate against unity within the Protestant community. It
also presents an example of how radical Protestant thought is
locked into its political position by an inflexibility derived
from religious certainty. Pragmatism in the political sphere is
rendered impossible, as this would only serve to dilute their
distinctive cultural identity and, perhaps more importantly, would
endanger the free exercise of their religion and thus imperil
their chances of being granted eternal salvation.

... : Away from the conference chamber, which I had declined
to enter because of my opposition to shared worship between Roman
Catholics and Protestants, I spoke to Dr Gordon Gray I'm in a
sense disappointed to find you as a Presbyterian here at this
ecumenical conference.
G: Well that's your problem not mine, for I think it's a wonderful
thing to be here. We are affirming the same Biblical faith as
Calvin affirmed. Involvement in conferences of this kind in no
way means a compromise of our Reformed tradition ...
S: You see I wouldn't accept that, I would contend that Calvin's
concern was to establish clarity in matters of religious thought,
and when we come to a conference like this, there's considerable
confusion and ambiguity about the basis of membership, and what
really constitutes a Christian.
G: Have you been in the conference itself'?
S: Well I haven't been in the conference...
G: Have you been at any other conferences for instance?
S: No I haven't been at any comparable conferences, but what I
have done is studied the issue in very considerable detail ...
G: Studied what issue?
S: The issue of ecumenism, in the modern world. I have maintained
opposition to the ecumenical movement from [sic] a very considerable
length of time, going back years, and in the early days I was
taught that the ecumenical movement was really a Romeward trend,
and I don't believe, if you look at the situation, that can seriously
be disputed, that really ecumenism is moving back under the shadow
of Rome.
G: Well now, you're using two terms there, a Romeward trend, and
under the shadow of Rome. I would ask you to justify those terms.
S: Right, well what I mean by that is that we are moving into
an age when there will be a confederation of churches, with the
Pope as the head, like a kind of Queen of the Commonwealth; now
that's not my statement, that's the statement of one of the bishops
who is very ecumenical in his thinking... This is what they're
aiming at. [14]

It would be easy to sneer at this warped logic as evidence of
a classic unionist Neanderthal man, a bigot in bigot's clothing
to whom the word ,compromise' would appear to be anathema. To
do so would be to misunderstand the integrity and serious implications
represented by this strain of unionist thought. For many radical
Protestants, such religious conviction lies at the centre of their
political activity, with the battle for electoral support being
merely an extension of the battle for souls. It should not be
surprising to learn that such concrete religious beliefs produce
a concrete political ideology which is unwieldy, inflexible and
unadaptable to changing circumstances. journalists Ed Moloney
and Andy Pollak quote a former member of the Free Presbyterian
Church as an example of how politics and religion are inextricably
linked within the DUP, with the church being the engine room of
the party's electoral machine.

They bring an evangelical fervour to electioneering because
electioneering is part of the crusade, because it's spiritual
warfare, part of their spiritual work. Some more pious church
members do object saying it's all unspiritual and worldly, but
at election time, their objections count for nothing and the whole
church becomes centred round it. It's the same battle for God
and Ulster, that's the key. [15]

Religion also acts as a hindrance to unionist unity, as despite
the increasing secularisation of the DUP during the 1980s it still
plays an important role in policy formulation. This is not so
much because of the doctrinal semantics of fundamentalist Protestantism,
but because of the political aspects of dogmatic theology Radical
unionism, such as that exhibited above by Clifford Smyth, has
a much greater number of political absolutes which are non-negotiable
than have the more secularly orientated Ulster Unionist Party.
The DUP have to fit developments in their political environment
into their existing matrix, or world view This leads to an extrapolation
of events to the degree where their political vision descends
into paranoid delusion. The Machiavellian intent of antagonistic
world forces headed by the Vatican, the American government and
the European Union are all continually conspiring against Ulster
Protestantism. Consequently, any political movement by the British
government is often seen as a product of these antagonistic forces
and must therefore be resisted. This penchant within the DUP for
conspiracy-theory politics was illustrated by Ian Paisley during
an interview conducted several years after the signing of the
AIA. When asked to explain why Margaret Thatcher changed her mind
so dramatically from her response to the three options of the
New Ireland Forum to endorsing the Agreement barely a year later,
the DUP leader recited what has become a familiar litany.

I believe that Enoch Powell is right in saying that Washington
had a big say in bringing it about. But I think that we are getting
away from the real lobby. The real lobby came from the Vatican.
The real lobby came from the Church of Rome. The Church of Rome
throughout the world was preaching against the unionist position
for years, and using their pulpits, and their newspapers, and
the vast machinery of the Roman Catholic political machine that
emanates from the Vatican, as a lever against everything that
Ulster Protestants stand for. I can see that influence in Europe,
because the European Parliament is largely a Roman Catholic Parliament....
I go to the source, and I believe the source is the Roman Catholic
Church.[16]

The Ulster Unionist Party is generally less hysterical in its
political analysis and is usually capable of determining where
its best interests lie, even if being unable to achieve them.
Michael McGimpsey's analysis of why the AIA was signed does not
allude to the web of international intrigue outlined by Paisley,
but regards it purely as a matter of British domestic policy-making:
'I think clearly Thatcher decided that something radical had to
be done, and that is where the Agreement came from; it might have
been partly the child of the Forum, but it was primarily the result
of the Brighton bombing.'[17]

In contrast to the radical unionist perspective, the Ulster British
ideology (to use Todd's terminology) has a primary cultural identification
with Great Britain and a secondary regional loyalty to Northern
Ireland. This tradition is much less insular, viewing the British
connection in terms of technological progress and the effects
of the British welfare state on society's health and education.
The cultural perspective of this strand of the ideology does not
emphasise the mythical figures of the seventeenth century; rather
its adherents see themselves bound up in and integrated into the
'British Family' through institutionalised linkages such as industrial
connections, trade union organisations and British social welfare
policies, which encourage them to view life from a British perspective.
The historical legacy also plays an important part in the formation
of the Northern Ireland British identity, as family and military
connections have created a bond between Ulster and Britain, although
this is increasingly becoming a one-way relationship. In addition,
the emphasis on Britain's imperial history as taught in the state
(de facto Protestant) school system and the importance
placed on the part played by Ulstermen in Britain's imperial wars,
especially at the Somme, have contributed to a cultural identification
with those in the rest of the United Kingdom. This identity is
reinforced by their view of the Republic of Ireland, as while
they conceive of themselves as being progressive, liberal and
democratic, they view the Southern Irish as being regressive,
conservative and authoritarian. This strand of unionist philosophy
was outlined by John Taylor when the Ulster Unionist MP for Strangford
was asked whether his unionism revolved primarily around a political
allegiance to Britain derived from a perception of potential economic
advantage, or rather emanated from a cultural affinity with the
people and institutions of the UK.

Oh it would be more cultural, and loyalty to the Crown, and...
obviously the kind of society, a sectarian Catholic state which
would apply here if we had a united Ireland, we see this in the
Republic. Even Garret FitzGerald, the man who signed the Anglo-lrish
Agreement, was open enough to say that the South of Ireland was
a sectarian state. We couldn't live in that kind of climate here
in Northern Ireland as part of the Republic. There are a large
number of reasons why one is a unionist, there is the loyalty
to the Crown, there is your whole historic background, the fact
that one's families for hundreds of years have been connected
with the British army, and, of course, there is also the economic
advantages.... There are economic advantages for everyone, Catholic
and Protestant, but as I say, that is not the only factor that
is the guiding philosophy for being a unionist, I think I would
still be a unionist even if the economy hadn't progressed in the
way it did.[18]

Edward Moxon-Browne proposes an economic hypothesis to account
for the divisions within unionism between radicals and pragmatists.
He argues that those who see themselves as British are likely
to be upper-class Protestants, with the lower social orders being
more attached to a regional 'Ulster' identity. This argument is
based on the premise that middle- and upper-class Protestants
have benefited from the Union in terms of economic and political
power, whereas the lower socio-economic groups who have not prospered
to the same degree would not feel the same cultural or institutional
affinity In this analysis, the unionist identity is seen as being
primarily based in economic materialism. 'For the Protestant,
national identity is a pragmatic issue, it is based on perceptions
of advantage.'[19] Moxon-Browne uses data from the 1978 Social
Attitudes Survey to illustrate the division within the unionist
ideology, as the results showed that two-thirds of the Protestant
community viewed themselves as British while approximately 20
per cent favoured an Ulster identity. This does not explain, however,
why large sections of the working class profess to having a British
identity, or why the Democratic Unionist Party has become increasingly
professionalised. These young, urban, upwardly mobile middle-class
Protestants are not changing their political philosophies in line
with the growth of their material prosperity. Evidence of this
fact was provided by the DUP chief whip, Nigel Dodds, when asked
to define the central principles of unionism from his point of
view. Dodds, a lawyer and graduate of Cambridge University, emphasised
not so much a cultural affinity with subjects in the rest of the
UK as a desire to retain the link with Britain as a means of preserving
the existing cultural ethos within Northern Ireland. The subtext
of this rhetoric is that unionists have a strategic political
allegiance to Britain for so long as it guarantees the existing
Protestant hegemony and prevents the dilution of the region's
specific cultural identity through an increase in Dublin's political
influence in Northern Ireland.

Well the general principle of unionism, I suppose, is the
maintenance of the union with Britain. My view is that at the
end of the day, we have got to preserve a British way of life
in Northern Ireland. That means seeking at all times to preserve
the Union, but if we are forced out of the Union or the Union
becomes untenable, then we must preserve that by looking at some
form of independence, but certainly not being absorbed by the
Irish Republic. [20]

In the past, socio-economic criteria such as those forwarded by
Moxon-Browne functioned as a useful shorthand for an understanding
of unionist motivations. However, time has moved on and the picture
has become increasingly complex. Few of the activists and supporters
of the Progressive Unionist Party, for example, are tax exiles
from Northern Ireland, yet they display none of the 'little-Ulsterism'
which materialist explanations might expect. When asked to define
the central principles of unionism from his point of view, the
Shankill Road community worker and PUP activist Billy Hutchinson
provided a response which could just as easily have come from
a prosperous businessman from Northern Ireland's 'gold coast'
in North Down.

For me unionism is quite simple. It's about maintaining the
link with the rest of the United Kingdom and I don't think that
it's any more or any less. As somebody who was brought up in a
Protestant tradition and a very pro-British tradition, my links
are East-West politically. I would have links with working-class
communities in Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester and London. I have
also been brought up in that whole British democracy thing, the
Westminster model....... So for me, it's not about being a Protestant
or anything else and it's not about being an Orangeman... pure
and simple I think unionism is about the link with Britain and
it's as simple as that.[21]

Moloney and Pollak support Moxon-Browne's class-based view up
to a point, suggesting that the confessional element within the
DUP (by 1981, 89 per cent of DUP councillors were also Free Presbyterians)
illustrates a major difference between radical unionists and those
of an Ulster British disposition. Their perception of the class
difference within the unionist ideology may be more appropriately
described as a conflict between materialism and anti-materialism.
While many mainstream Ulster British unionists, such as those
who inhabit the Ulster Unionist Party, support the Union for social
and economic reasons and have a cultural affinity with the rest
of the UK,

The DUP view of the Union is much more fundamental. They regard
it principally as a mechanism through which they can best avoid
absorption into a Roman Catholic Irish Republic with the resulting
destruction of the Bible Protestantism that they hold so dear.[22]

Moloney and Pollak emphasise the importance of the conditional
loyalty exhibited by many Northern Ireland Protestants and argue
that the professed willingness to rebel against Westminster is
due to a deep-rooted independent sentiment fashioned by the conditions
of their entry into Ulster in the seventeenth century Their examination
of the DUP tends to negate the viability of the economic hypothesis
proposed by Moxon-Browne, with the influx of young urban graduates
being particularly significant. These articulate and ambitious
'Duppies' came to prominence after the 1982 Assembly elections,
and '. . . their emergence has produced two distinct strands in
the DUP'. [23]

The old guard was largely rural and had a basic education, fundamental
Protestantism and a belief in Ian Paisley, whilst the new guard,
personified by Peter Robinson and Sammy Wilson, was mainly urban,
well educated and less directly connected to the Free Presbyterian
Church. The early 1980s witnessed the secularisation of the DUP
under the careful stewardship of Peter Robinson, who, like Desmond
Boal before him, had convinced Paisley that the party could not
expand unless it transcended its Free Presbyterian base. Robinson
made himself indispensable to Paisley through his organisational
expertise, a fact recognised by the rank and file membership:
'Whatever else he is, Ian is not a great man for the details of
organisation. It was Peter who was really responsible for making
the DUP into what it is now.'[24] Robinson's political base is
East Belfast, an urban constituency with a much smaller proportion
of Free Presbyterian members than rural areas such as North Antrim.
Built upon the employment centres of Harland and Wolff, and Shorts,
East Belfast is predominantly composed of working-class Protestants
who find the dogmatism of Free Presbyterianism less attractive
than the lower middle classes and rural Protestants who populate
its pews. Although their loyalism is equally virulent, it contains
little of the restrictive puritanical fervour so apparent within
Free Presbyterianism. The suggestion that the DUP can be separated
into two groups, religious bigots and secular bigots, is itself
something of a simplification. Ian Paisley Jnr contends that the
significance of religion within the DUP is rather more complex.

I think that the DUP market, itself and has always marketed
itself to certain sections of the unionist community. First of
all, traditional Protestant unionism, I think, is one of the mainstays
of the DUP. That doesn't necessarily mean a religious thing but
it certainly means that those things which people see traditionally
as being very much part of their identity, their whole ethnic
mix of being a Protestant evangelical, even though they might
go and play the National Lottery and go to the pub at the weekend,
at the end of the day their granny or their mother was a good
evangelical woman and that's something which they go back to as
a touchstone of normality.[25]

Clearly, the changing social profile of the DUP has influenced
the political significance of religion within the party. An example
of this cultural gap was provided by Castlereagh Borough Council's
decision to hold a referendum on the issue of whether the Dundonald
Ice-Bowl should be allowed to open on a Sunday. The East Belfast
DUP incurred the wrath of the Protestant fundamentalist group,
The Lord's Day Observance Society, as under Peter Robinson's influence
the council's main preoccupation was to keep the rates down through
maximising the use of the amenity and reflect public wishes, rather
than take a dogmatic and unpopular stand on religious grounds.
This controversy was a testament to the success with which Robinson
has separated the DUP from the Free Presbyterian Church in East
Belfast.

When he looked at East Belfast and the votes he needed to
win and sized up the hard core DUP in it - which basically boiled
down to the Free Presbyterian Church - he hadn't a hope of winning
it. So he had to broaden the base to bring in people whose loyalty
was to the party not the Church and to give him credit he worked
incredibly hard to do it. [26]

Robinson's professionalisation of the DUP was accompanied by an
influx of young articulate graduates into the party. Emerging
during the Assembly elections of 1982, these Young Turks owed
their primary allegiance to Robinson rather than Paisley and represented
a new faction within the party. The traditional DUP members, those
left over from its predecessor the Protestant Unionist Party,
were often poorly educated, had a simple unquestioning faith in
fundamentalist Protestantism and regarded Ian Paisley as a deity.
By the early eighties the character of the membership was changing,
with new supporters attracted by a more strident approach to politics,
the increased prospects of advancement through the ranks of the
party and the outlet for radical socio-economic opinions. This
group contained a nursery of young talent including Nigel Dodds,
Jim Wells, Jim Allister, Alan Kane and Sammy Wilson, and they
appealed to people on secular grounds, with the religious metaphors
and evangelical sentiment of the'old guard' being less evident
within their political vocabulary.

One consistent feature of this influx of new blood into the DUP
was its gender profile. The only women of any significance who
came into the foreground of the party were those connected by
either blood or marriage to more famous relatives. While the DUP
has a number of female elected representatives in local government,
few women have gained a substantial profile within this section
of radical unionist politics. Iris Robinson is the partner of
the DUP deputy leader and was elected to Castlereagh Borough Council
as a DUP representative, eventually, due to her own ability, becoming
leader of the council. Elizabeth Seawright was elected to Belfast
City Council as an independent after the assassination of her
husband George Seawright, a former DUP councillor who was expelled
from the party for extreme remarks he made about 'incinerating'
Catholics. Perhaps the most obvious and interesting example is
provided by Rhonda Paisley, daughter of the party leader. As a
Belfast City councillor during the late 1980s and early 1990s,
she undoubtedly had the highest media profile of any woman within
the DUP. This was only in part a consequence of her family ties
and probably owed more to another genetic inheritance, namely
her gift for staging publicity stunts, such as letting off a rape
alarm in the council chamber when a Sinn Fein councillor was trying
to speak. Rhonda Paisley personified the culture clash within
the DUP between old and new, and this struggle, together with
the adversarial nature of the debate in local government saw her
leave active political life in 1992. Paisley was a young, well-educated
ambitious woman, with impeccable contacts for political advancement.
Though being for many years a practising Free Presbyterian,[27]
her social attitudes may have seemed too modern, her lipstick
too red and her skirts too short for some of those of a more traditional
bent within the party. While nationalists may have perceived her
as simply another anti-Catholic bigot and a chip off the old block,
a radically different perspective between her and many of her
colleagues became apparent when it came to women's issues. One
example of this was a row in April 1989 over the siting of two
statues in Amelia Street in Belfast city centre and Paisley's
support of a motion in Belfast City Council to provide grant assistance
of £1 5,000. The statues depicted two prostitutes in a commemoration
of Belfast's local history, as in the past the street had been
a thoroughfare for that particular trade in the city. While most
of the DUP on Belfast City Council saw this proposal as an outrageous
tribute to immoral practices, Paisley, as a feminist and practising
artist herself, regarded it as an artistic expression of a contemporary
social issue. Rev. Ivan Foster (who was not a member of the council)
condemned the decision, claiming that God viewed prostitution
as 'wickedness', while Paisley commented that her support for
the work was 'a personal one'. Inevitably, the paradoxes inherent
in simultaneously advocating dogmatic politics and personal liberalism
could not be sustained. In February 1992, Rhonda Paisley announced
that she did not intend to defend her seat on Belfast City Council
at the district council elections the following year.

Politics is not my future and there's no point pretending
it is.... I dread council meetings and I always leave exhausted.
People can push and shove me all they like but I'm not going to
stay in politics any longer than I have to. I want to paint and
I intend to give it my best shot now.[ 28]

Aside from socio-cultural differences between the 'new women'
in the party such as Rhonda Paisley and the 'Stepford wives' (the
more traditional social profile of rural matronly housewives with
good cooking skills but a basic education and limited independent
careerism), the very nature of politics in Northern Ireland has
produced a male-dominated environment. While politics is a profession
where women are underrepresented generally, due to both anti-social
working conditions and deliberate exclusion by the 'clubby' elite
who often control candidate selection, this is a much more pronounced
phenomenon in Northern Ireland than in either the Republic or
Great Britain. The reasons for this are both historical and social.
The main political organisations in contemporary Northern Ireland
politics either evolved out of violence or were formed in reaction
to that violence. As those engaged in the violence - either directly
though republicanism and loyalism or peripherally in the peaceful
protest of the civil rights demonstrations or the less peaceful
counterdemonstrations - were largely male, it was they who dominated
the political structures. In addition, political activism in Northern
Ireland during the armed conflict between 1969 and 1994 carried
a much greater personal risk for those involved than is normally
the case in more stable societies and this did little to encourage
women to enter the political arena. Because the political debate
has taken place in an atmosphere of violence and has rarely deviated
from the central issue of the region's constitutional future,
such 'debate' has exuded machismo and testosterone, as anyone
who has attended Belfast City Council during the period could
attest to. While it would be unreasonable to assume that women
are any less concerned about the constitutional issue, it would
be fair to suggest that the democratic deficit which has existed
since the introduction of direct rule in 1972 (with power over
socio-economic issues resting not with local politicians but with
unelected officials and various quangos) has acted as a disincentive
to female involvement in the political life of the region.

At the beginning of this century James Connolly described
the Northern Ireland woman as 'the slave of a slave'. . . . This
graphic phrase is no less fitting today ... Women in Northern
Ireland tend to marry young, start their families soon afterwards
and remain by strong family networks. They are not helped to examine
in any critical way their domestic role in the home, or indeed
their relationship to their husbands and their families: rather
they are socialised into a strong maternal role directed to 'keeping
the family together', 'making ends meet' and servicing political
campaigns largely determined by men. [29]

In social terms Northern Ireland is a very patriarchal and conservative
society where 'family values' is one concept which unites both
Catholic and Protestant and the woman's role in society is seen
in more traditional terms than in Great Britain. One of the few
issues which unites 'the two communities' concerns legislation
on moral issues such as abortion (which remains illegal in Northern
Ireland despite being legal in the rest of the UK), divorce and
sex education. There was, for instance, common opposition from
the SDLP, UUP and DUP to the opening of the Brook Clinic in Belfast
in September 1992.[30] Despite such 'official' opposition, the
clinic had a considerable amount of cross-community support among
women in the North and has developed a successful service in the
region. 'On the opening day, the Reverend Ian Paisley arrived
to preach his message of damnation, but he beat a hasty retreat
after a number of women outside the entrance started dancing to
the hymn "Rock of Ages" when it came blaring over his
sound system.'[31]

Given this propensity for social conservatism, there is nonetheless
a noticeable underrepresentation of women in unionist politics
as compared with their nationalist counterparts.[32] One historical
reason for this was that in the struggle to resist Home Rule in
Ulster at the beginning of the century, unionism was formed as
a political movement dedicated to resisting this legislation through
extraparliamentary means. The formation of the Ulster Volunteer
Force (UVF) and signing of Ulster's 'Solemn League and Covenant'
were not considered activities suitable for women. Many of those
who signed the covenant did so in their own blood and pledged
to fight to the death over the issue. As few people thought that
women should give such a pledge, a separate register was opened,
in which the female population could record their support for
the cause. Other organisations within unionism which provide a
link between the past and the present exhibit a similar patriarchal
if not patronising culture. The Orange Order is an obvious example
with its pseudo-military regalia and structure, where the vast
majority of the membership is male. The widespread presence of
Freemasonry (a less visible and less vulgar organisation than
Orangeism but perhaps a more powerful one) within the Protestant
middle and upper classes is another bastion of male exclusivity
within the unionist community.

Evangelical religion has also done little to encourage women to
come forward into the political arena. While there are few overt
examples where women candidates have been discriminated against
because of their gender, the fact that one of the major unionist
parties is led by the moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church
has been reflected in the political culture. Ian Paisley commented
during one of his early battles with a particularly troublesome
female parishioner that; 'when you meet a devil wearing trousers
it's bad, but a devil wearing a skirt is ten times worse'.[33]
While Rhonda Paisley was able to enter the fast-track to advancement
within the party, she was the exception rather than the rule.
Within this culture, women are rarely seen as equals who deserve
access to the same levers in society as their male counterparts,
but as inherently different 'creatures' whose function in society
should reflect that fact. They should be home-makers rather than
house-builders, nurses rather than mechanics, whose God-given
function is to look after their husbands and rear their children
rather than build independent careers. Those women who subscribe
to this agenda (and obviously many do not) are unlikely to build
profiles within unionist politics.

Clearly something is fundamentally wrong with a society where
over 50 per cent of the population is composed of women, yet which
has no female MPs or MEPs and in which only 11 per cent of local
government councillors are female.[34] However, while women are
underrepresented generally (and particularly so within unionist
politics) at the top level, their influence permeates grass-roots
politics and community work to a much greater degree,

Disadvantaged by having no elected female politicians in either
the parliaments of Westminster or Brussels, women turned instead
to a wide range of activism within the more informal settings
of the community and voluntary sectors. Within the 'democratic
deficit' of Northern Ireland, this is where the real political
activism has taken place and where some of the most talented political
women can be found. Rather than pursue the more official road
of electoral politics, a road from which many of them have been
alienated because of its uncompromising and stagnant style of
politics, they have chosen instead to become the effective agents
of change in their work with women at the more grass-roots level.
[35]

In view of the present level of political debate within Northern
Ireland, it is clearly time for both unionist and nationalist
parties to develop inclusive mechanisms which provide an outlet
for women to participate in the mainstream political process.
The debate has already begun. At a conference in September 1995,
May Blood of the Shankill Women's Forum indicated that the old
attitudes would have to change. 'This isn't good enough. We invited
seven councillors from the area to explain their views on women's
rights and the lack of women in politics and only one has bothered
to turn up.'[36] The UUP's Chris McGimpsey, the lone councillor
who did turn up, recognised the difficulties which women faced
in gaining a voice in the political system in general and within
unionist politics in particular. Irish Times journalist Suzanne
Breen reported McGimpsey's account of the problems encountered
by women in the UUP.

Mr McGimpsey said that his party had recently established
a 'women and consumer affairs committee'. Even setting up a body
with so unsatisfactory a title had been a battle. 'Initially it
was just to be a consumer affairs committee with special reference
to women - presumably because they buy the groceries on a Friday.'
When the UUP debated women's rights at its annual conference earlier
this year, it degenerated into 'men standing up and taking the
piss out of women'.[37]

Evidence of the dissatisfaction at the traditional parties' response
to the lack of women in mainstream politics was apparent with
the formation of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition to contest
the Forum elections held on 30 May 1996. This cross-party body
was more a single-issue interest group than political party, taking
advantage of the unique electoral arrangements of 30 May[38] to
highlight the gender imbalance in Northern Ireland politics and
do something to remedy the situation, while bringing a more pragmatic
perspective to the hackneyed debate of the more traditional parties.
In comparison to the sterile dialogue going on between unionism
and nationalism, separate political structures such as the Women's
Coalition may be an effective way, not just of augmenting female
representation in the political process, but of redressing the
male-dominated cultures prevalent within the existing political
organisations in Northern Ireland.

Evidence of the tensions within the DUP - between the young, urban,
politically secular element, and the older, predominantly rural,
overtly evangelical/Free Presbyterian contingent which had originally
formed the backbone of the DUP (especially in its former manifestation
as the Protestant Unionist Party) - is provided by a comparison
of the alternative cultural identities expressed by Sammy Wilson
and former DUP member Rev. Ivan Foster. It was suggested to Wilson
that there were those within the DUP who would claim to be a Protestant
first, and a unionist only for as long as this advanced Protestantism
in Northern Ireland. When asked if he would accept the hypothetical
situation where the monarch was removed as constitutional head
of state in Britain and replaced by an elected president who was
not a Protestant, Wilson replied that this would not be sufficient
cause for him to withdraw his loyalty from the state.

Yes, I mean, I don't think my unionism depends upon whether
the King or Queen is a 'Prod' or what. Probably the Protestantism
that the Queen espouses might be a bit different from the Protestantism
I would espouse anyway, so I'm not so sure that it makes all that
much difference. No, I mean, my unionism is based much more on
the historical connection that there is between this part of the
island and the rest of the United Kingdom. It is based on the
fact that my identity is more with the rest of the United Kingdom,
whether that's culturally or religiously or whatever.... I think
that one has also got to say that there is a negative reason for
it as well, and the negative reason is I don't believe that any
unionist would get a fair deal in the Irish Republic. I have no
evidence, despite all the promises that have been made, that they
are going to change their society. [39]

Wilson's rhetoric contrasts sharply with that of the Rev. Ivan
Foster, whose language abounds with religious metaphors and whose
primary motivation is evidently the preservation of a fundamentalist-orientated
Protestant culture within Northern Ireland. This was brought sharply
into focus when he denounced proposed education reforms (what
later became the Education Reform [Nl] Order 1990) and specifically
the emphasis upon cultural heritage studies and education for
mutual understanding on the grounds that these represented an
attempt by the British government to indoctrinate Protestant children.
In describing Dr Brian Mawhinney (the then Education Minister
for Northern Ireland) as 'a latter-day Pharaoh' who sought, with
the 'stealth of the assassin' and under the 'guise of the educator',
to compromise the teaching of true Protestant Christianity, Foster
highlighted the strong isolationist element within the DUP.

It would appear that the strategy that Pharaoh adopted, because
he feared the growing strength of the Israelites, and felt that
it would not suit his purpose just to mount a massacre against
the adults, he decided to control them through their children
by killing off the all-male children that were born, and thus
he could control the nation.... I have no doubt that there is
an attempt being made to control the thinking, the political thinking
particularly, of the Protestant people in Northern Ireland, and
where better to make an attempt to do that than in the classroom.
[40]

When it was suggested to Foster that these reforms sought to encourage
understanding and tolerance of opposing cultures and were aimed
at dispelling myths and folklore which fed the sectarian strife
in Northern Ireland, his response exhibited the inherent insecurity
and fear within some sections of the unionist community. Here
we have a classic exposition of a defensive, reactionary ideology,
battling against what it perceived to be an aggressive external
community. In this analysis, the ultimate aggressor was considered
to be the Catholic Church, with the Vatican controlling the European
political actors, including of course the policies of the British
government. The Machiavellian world which people such as Foster
inhabited determined that Northern Ireland was at the top of the
Vatican's agenda, and thus the subtext of political reforms introduced
by the British government was to eradicate Bible-Christianity
in Northern Ireland and thereby reduce the religious and political
liberty of the Protestant community. The extent to which Foster's
political opinion was informed by his theological critique was
demonstrated by his reply to the suggestion that debunking traditional
attitudes to opposing religious faiths would lead to greater social
harmony. His political opposition to this education reform was
the direct result of his religious belief that Catholicism was
heresy and was therefore unlikely to be truthful in its interpretation
of itself:

When you see that plan [for educational reform] translated
into action, then you begin to suspect what is actually being
planned. How can I ask the Roman Catholic Church to paint for
me an accurate picture of itself, when, if it did that, it would
cause the mass of its people immediately to reject it as no church
of Jesus Christ, but a church of the Anti-Christ?[41]

Foster's attitude to political progress again demonstrates the
tendency for rigidity to flow from theological certainty, making
this strand of the ideology inflexible, unwieldy and incapable
of changing its strategy to cope with altered political circumstances.
Foster disagreed with the contention that peace could only be
achieved when all sections of the community agreed to respect
the beliefs and aspirations of their political opponents. His
reply to the suggestion that the classroom was a suitable place
to begin this process of rapprochement between the two
sectarian blocs illustrates once again the negative dynamic produced
by dogmatic theology. The application of these strict criteria
to the political arena tends to vitiate the possibility for moderation
because compromise is seen not as a diplomatic solution to an
intractable problem, but rather as a way of ensuring that everyone
ends up in the wrong.

Sir, if divisions are to be healed in this province, they
are to be healed by each and every one of us coming to the truth.
Each and every one of us finding out where we should be standing.
Not us all taking a step in each other's direction and arriving
on middle-ground, because middle-ground might be still the wrong
ground. I believe what is needed in this country is a spiritual
reformation, a spiritual revival, a return to Bible-Christianity,
and it is all the more surprising that a man like Dr Brian Mawhinney,
who I understand was brought up amongst the Plymouth Brethren,
and who should therefore have some understanding of what Bible-Christianity
is all about, should now be promoting an ecumenical venture of
this nature which is designed to change the whole face of Ulster
Protestantism, change it, never to be unchanged and brought back
again to the allegiance that it once had to the Word of God. It's
an attempt to destroy Ulster Protestantism forever. [42]

Any comparative analysis of Foster's rhetoric and that of his
former colleague Sammy Wilson would suggest that even within the
DUP respective legitimations of the Union differed greatly. It
should be noted here that Foster's subsequent resignation from
the DUP in protest against the slow pace of the anti-Agreement
campaign provides further evidence to support the contention that
the DUP's increasing urbanisation and secularisation was being
reflected in its policy-making. A testimony to this change was
provided by the pact with the UUP, a strategic compromise which
created internal tensions between the rural Free Presbyterian
grass-roots element and the urban working/middle-class contingent
who regarded this arrangement as a necessary evil for political
progress.

Another complicating factor within the DUP was provided by class
divisions between the party's urban working-class heartlands and
the increasingly middle-class composition of the leadership and,
more importantly, the conflicting political agendas of the rural
middle-class Free Presbyterian voters and their urban working-class
secular brethren. Clifford Smyth argues that the extent to which
the DUP became a working-class party is a matter for conjecture,
commenting that it is impossible to prove Paul Arthur's hypothesis
that 'Political Paisleyism was proletarian, but religious Paisleyism
attracted lower middle-class congregations which crammed the ample
car park with their Cortinas.'[43] While recognising that a distinction
does exist between Paisley's church supporters and his political
supporters, Smyth contends that '. . . it is a topic which defies
statistical quantification and remains therefore a matter of observation'.[44]
While the influx of young blood was initially encouraged by Paisley
as he needed to broaden the base of the party, the long-term benefits
for his own position were questionable. The professionalisation
of the DUP augmented the power base of Robinson and diminished
Paisley's authority within the party, hitherto insulated through
his leadership of the Free Presbyterian Church. The dangers of
creating the overmighty subject were to become apparent after
the signing of the Anglo-lrish Agreement, as Paisley found it
increasingly difficult to control the party and recognised with
mounting frustration that it was often Peter Robinson who was
setting the political agenda of the DUP.

The conflict within the DUP between secular and fundamentalist
factions hampered the party's development as disagreements began
to erupt over tactics such as civil disobedience. This was to
become particularly obvious after the Hillsborough Agreement,
when the inconsistency of party policy suggested that it emanated
from more than one source. Although there is a deep-rooted independent
sentiment in radical unionism which has grown out of the conditions
of their entry into Ulster in the seventeenth century, it does
not follow that Moloney and Pollak's summary of this strand of
the ideology accurately reflects the reality of unionist political
motivation.

The readiness of Protestants to rebel against Westminster,
as well as the occasional manifestations of an independent Ulster
sentiment, has its roots here. It is a deep strain in Northern
Ireland Protestantism and Paisley has successfully tapped it.
His followers' first allegiance is to Protestantism, not to the
Union. Their official slogan is: 'For God and Ulster'. As Paisley
has often told his supporters: 'The Alliance party is the political
wing of ecumenism but the DUP is the political wing of evangelical
Protestantism.'[45]

While this could certainly be said to be representative of the
DUP in their former manifestation as the Protestant Unionist Party,
the changes in personnel and the increasing urbanisation of the
party base have complicated the picture. As Sammy Wilson's testimony
concerning the basis of the Union would suggest, a degree of secularisation
has taken place which has been reflected in DUP policy-making.
Ironically perhaps, Ian Paisley Jnr displays attitudes more similar
to the secular modernisers than to those traditionally associated
with his father. Paisley Jnr, a well-educated, Belfast-born young
professional, was asked about the importance of religion in the
equation of allegiance. While stressing the importance of the
Protestant religion in his personal life and moral code, he differentiates
between private ethics and public political manifesto.

Obviously I'm a very passionate Protestant and I've a very
strong Protestant religious view and it's not just a Protestant
class view, a Protestant sociological view, it's a Protestant
religious view. That's a very personal thing for me. But, I think
that religion comes into Britishness and comes into unionism,
for me anyway, only to the point that I believe that religious
freedoms are cherished more underneath Britishness, and have more
ability to flourish, adapt and to actually exist than they would
have... under a single Irish nation.[46]

When asked if the hypothetical scenario whereby the British monarchy
were abolished and replaced with an elected president who was
not a Protestant would present grounds for leaving the Union,
Paisley Jnr gave the same response as his party colleague Sammy
Wilson.

Not at all. Not at all. Let's face it, we had a Lord Protector
you know? We had our revolution, we had our quasi-Presidency .
. . and that failed and the British state adopted . . . the constitutional
monarchy which we have obviously in adapted form today. So I don't
think it would be grounds for me to get out.[47]

When Peter Robinson was asked to outline the central principles
of his cultural identity, his response suggested that there is
more to the DUP than simply being the 'political wing of evangelical
Protestantism'. Asked the same question as Paisley Jnr about the
importance of Protestantism and the monarchy to his allegiance
to the Union, Robinson commented that such a scenario 'may not
in itself, automatically cause one to recoil from being within
the United Kingdom, but it removes one of the pegs that holds
down our unionism'.[48]

Those politicians who style themselves as representing the views
of former loyalist paramilitaries and those who have traditionally
been seen as a more insular, intolerant and religiously bigoted
element within the unionist community appear to be more flexible
on questions such as the monarchy and religion than Peter Robinson.
When Gary McMichael, the leader of the Ulster Democratic Party,
was asked to define the central principles of unionism from a
personal perspective, he replied that 'My unionism is not based
upon a protection of my Protestant identity, it's based upon the
practical needs of the people of Northern Ireland - all the people.'[49]
When asked specifically about his attitude to the replacement
of the British monarch with an elected president who was not a
Protestant, he exhibited a pragmatic, secular attitude: 'I don't
believe that we maintain the Union for as long as the Union retains
its Protestant character. That doesn't come into my thinking because
I want to see religion taken out of politics.'[50] David Ervine
took a similarly prosaic approach: 'I'd be interested in his politics
rather than his religion. I'm not interested.'[51]

Attitudes to the monarchy as an essential ingredient of their
political allegiance are by no means fixed within the unionist
population. Apart from the above testimony, there are elements
of the Protestant working class which take an ambivalent view.
It should be said that in general terms a devotion to the monarchy
(as opposed to the extended royal family) is still strong within
urban Protestant communities. However, although the Progressive
Unionist Party has a picture of the Queen hanging on the wall
of their party headquarters on the Shankill Road in Belfast (it
is not a recent likeness), Billy Hutchinson was able to say that
'[personally], I would have to say that I'm not even sure that
I'm a monarchist. I'm not loyal to any monarchy. What I'm loyal
to is my class and also my political beliefs.'[52] David Ervine
espouses a similar view, emphasising that his unionism was based
more in present-day membership of a liberal democracy (albeit
an imperfect one) than in any romantic attachment to a historical
figurehead. 'My definition of unionism is very simple . . . and
it is merely that I am a citizen of the United Kingdom - no more
no less.'[53] He went on:

It would be ridiculous of me to take a magic wand and just
rub the Queen and the royal family out, they are aspects of our
society that many many people have a fondness for . . . Essentially
I'm not an elitist and therefore don't like anybody else who is,
or don't like any other system that espouses that elitism.[54
]

It is clear that to simply define unionism as being a dichotomy
between moderates and extremists, as Garret FitzGerald has done,
is little more than a caricature of the ideology which does not
address the nuances within it. Many of those whose extremism has
in the past resulted in their engaging in political violence are
in some instances more open-minded than those within the DUP who
have pursued more moderate forms of political behaviour. Consider
the following responses of David Ervine of the PUP and Peter Robinson
of the DUP when questioned about their cultural identity. Though
anxious to differentiate between his geographical situation and
cultural iconography, Ervine stated that, as far as he was concerned,

I haven't really got a problem in terms of someone calling
me Irish. But if I felt that that were being done to my detriment,
then I would define exactly what it was for them and say 'look
this is not the case. I firmly believe myself to be British'.
We are a peculiarity in that we're both.[55]

The deputy leader of the DUP takes a much more defensive and absolutist
position than Ervine, indicating that his cultural identity is
a product of what he considers to be an antagonistic counterculture
and malign irredentist nationalist project on the other part of
the island.

I resent people suggesting I'm Irish. My wife would throw
a tantrum if anybody called her Irish. And that's simply because
of not wanting to be associated with this country whose government
has been their foe for the last twenty-five odd years.[56]

The complexity of this issue was illustrated when Ian Paisley
was asked a similar question. The DUP leader, whom we might expect
would be the embodiment of old-style Ulster loyalist sentiment,
exhibited a different perspective than that expressed by his deputy
leader. 'I was born in the island of Ireland. I have Irish traits
in me - we don't all have the traits of what came from Scotland,
there is the Celtic factor . . . and I am an Irishman because
you cannot be an Ulsterman without being an Irishman.'[57] One
of the most eloquent explanations of the apparent conundrum for
working-class Protestants in defining their identity within the
context of being British while living within an Irish cultural
inheritance was provided by Patricia Anderson of Ballybeen Community
Theatre. Commenting on her participation in a seminar on the Protestant
cultural identity in Northern Ireland organised by the Ulster
People's College in Belfast, Ms Anderson illustrates the extent
to which some people in the unionist community have come to terms
with their dual identity.

At first it was a bit scary because I didn't want to admit
I was Irish. I didn't want anything to do with being Irish, I
was British. But then I learned that I am Irish and I can reclaim
all my Irishness, the Irish dancing, the Irish language, everything.
That's as much part of me as it is to anybody in the nationalist
community. I'm very proud to be a Protestant and very proud to
be British, but I'm also very proud to be able to sit here and
say, 'I'm Irish too' and have as much right to be as anyone. [58]

This should be taken to mean a definition of unionist political
behaviour which is primarily motivated from a sense of belonging
to an ethnic and/or national community within Northern Ireland,
with a consequent right to exercise self-determination autonomously.
Such Unionists are liable to emphasise local/regional characteristics
such as religion, culture and historical experience over merely
a political allegiance specifically to the Union with Great Britain
or, more broadly, the liberal-democratic ideals and principles
which that regime is held to represent.

Casting a sociologist's eye on the subject, Steve Bruce attempts
to explain the differences between nationalist and unionist political
behaviour by contending that Catholic nationalists in Northern
Ireland form part of a nation, while Protestant unionists are
essentially an ethnic group. This assumption provides the basis
for an identity crisis thesis, with Bruce arguing that, devoid
of the cultural richness and diversity available to . Catholic
nationalists, Protestant unionists are forced to articulate their
identity in terms of religious exclusivity. In this analysis,
nationalist security about their cultural identity has allowed
them to secularise their ideology and decouple their Catholicism
from their nationalism (for example, marxist republicanism), whereas
unionists, by virtue of being a smaller and more vulnerable ethnic
group, have not been able to do likewise. According to Bruce,
no secure cultural identity is available to unionists outside
the confines of evangelical Protestantism. As unionism in this
analysis is seen as being primarily concerned with avoiding absorption
into the Irish Republic and thereby becoming an even more vulnerable
minority, there is a gravitational pull within the unionist community
during periods of constitutional uncertainty towards the most
vivid expressions of Protestantism. For Bruce, therefore, it is
this inability to perceive a common identity outside the boundaries
of their religious observance which explains the importance of
Protestantism in unionist politics.

A people need a shared ideology if they are to remain a people.
Although the minority in the North does draw on religious symbolism,
Catholics do not need religion. Three-quarters of a united Ireland
already exists within travelling distance. Nationalism is so well-established
as to provide a strong source of identity. Ulster loyalists, however,
need their evangelical religion because it is the only viable
source of a shared identity. After all, they want to be British,
but the British do not want them. They are loyal, but loyal to
what? The only coherent set of ideas which explains the past,
which gives them a sense of who they are, which makes them feel
justifiably superior to Catholics, and which gives them the hope
that they will survive, is evangelical Protestantism. [59]

There are a number of reasons why Bruce's arguments are ultimately
unsatisfactory, not least of which is that he appears to suggest
that the terms evangelical Protestant and unionist are synonymous.
His assertion that this strand of Protestantism is the most natural
constituency from which the unionist ideology is composed is highly
contentious. One could ask why it is then, if this is the case,
that the Ulster Unionist Party enjoys a significantly greater
amount of electoral support from the Protestant community (even
during times of crisis such as the post-AIA period) than does
the DUP. Secondly, Bruce's equation of evangelical Protestantism
with Ian Paisley and the DUP does not take account of that party's
increasing secularisation. Nor does it explain why Ian Paisley,
the personification of the politician motivated by religious conviction,
has steadily lost control of his party, to the point that in the
mid-1990s he is merely the dominant presence within it, rather
than having the omnipotent influence he enjoyed in the late 1970s.
If Bruce's thesis was correct, we should have seen a rapid and
dramatic increase in support for the DUP after the signing of
the AIA, as frightened unionists rushed to hide behind the skirts
of this shared religious identity The fact that this did not occur
brings us to the most important problem with Bruce's argument,
namely his analysis of Protestantism and unionism. For his thesis
to work, Bruce is forced to adopt reductionist criteria in his
definition of these terms. Although he astutely points out that
the democratic nature of Protestantism fosters political disputes,
due to the absence of an ultimate moral authority other than the
Bible, individually interpreted,[60] he does not explain how the
heterogeneous nature of Protestantism has produced conflicting
cultural identities.

Bruce has suggested that the conflict within unionism was due
to a two-pronged suspicion of the Protestant middle class. On
the one hand, the working-class element was wary of the elite
nature of the Ulster Unionist Party leadership, and argued on
populist grounds for higher wages, better housing and more welfare
provisions. The second group were suspicious of the UUP's lack
of evangelical piety, and they wanted to bring a greater theological
aspect to unionism. However, Bruce's depiction of Protestants
as an ethnic group, sharing common historical experiences, traditions,
values, beliefs and symbols, creates a one-dimensional view of
unionism which does not correspond with reality. It is clear that
unionists do not all share a common cultural language,
but are split in religious terms along denominational lines, are
divided over their support for Protestant institutions such as
the Orange Order and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), and,
more fundamentally, are divided over whether Northern Ireland
is a nation with the right to self-determination or merely another
region of the United Kingdom.

Clearly there are problems with this. Bruce proposes that the
central organising principle of unionism is provided by the unifying
force of evangelical Protestantism. certainly this is a factor
but only one of many and hardly the dominant one. Bruce pursues
his own argument to self-destruction and reduces what is a complicated
and multifaceted community to a caricature of itself. Fellow sociologist
Colin Coulter does not overstate the case against Bruce:

[he] fails to grasp the genuinely diverse and complex character
of unionism . . . In reality unionism does not possess a single
essence, but rather exists as a single formation that accommodates
a number of divergent and contradictory ideological impulses and
political interests sharing little in common save for a commitment
to the Union itself.[61]

John McGarry and Brendan O'Leary are less charitable. Giving him
the rather unflattering 'handle' of 'sociologist of religion',
these carnivores of the political science jungle charge Bruce
with an 'unprofessional use of data' over his argument that Protestant
resistance to a united Ireland was motivated primarily by religious
reasons.[62] His psephological endeavours are equally patronised.
Bruce is implicitly accused of academic bias over his use of untypical
election results (a concentration on personality-driven European
rather than Westminster elections) to explain DUP popularity.
To sustain his thesis Professor Bruce seems intent on exaggerating
the DUP's support . . . The lesson is simple: sociologists of
religion, over-ambitious to apply their insights, should be more
cautious with electoral data.'[63]To be fair to Bruce, his more
recent work has tip-toed away from his bald assertion in 1986
that 'the Northern Ireland conflict is a religious conflict' and
that it was people's adherence to 'competing religious traditions
which has given the conflict its enduring and intractable quality.'[64]
In his 1994 book on Protestant paramilitary attitudes, Bruce returns
to the above statement to add the caveat that the connection between
politics and religion in Northern Ireland is 'complex'.[65] However,
impaled on a 'cleft-stick' of his own whittling, he continues
to overemphasise the importance of what is in reality a minor
branch in the unionist political tree.

The key point is the centrality of evangelicalism for the
Ulster loyalist's sense of ethnic identity. It defines the group
to which he belongs, it figures large in the history of that group,
it legitimates the group's advantages (such as they are), and
it radically distinguishes the group from its traditional enemy.[66]

My evidence would suggest that the obverse is the case. it is
clear from the testimony of former loyalist paramilitaries and
members of the DUP that, although religion plays an important
part in their personal lives and cultural iconography, it forms
a more complex component of their political calculations.

Other concepts in Bruce's recent work are even more problematic.
His assertion that 'for many Protestants in Northern Ireland,
Ulster loyalism has displaced the Ulster Britishness which was
common prior to the present conflict'[67] does not stand up to
empirical examination. In fact the reverse is true. The Social
Attitudes Survey (1990) compared responses to the question of
whether people in Northern Ireland felt themselves to be British,
Irish, Ulster or Northern Irish over a time-span of twenty-one
years. In 1968, 39 per cent of Protestants regarded themselves
as British while 32 per cent opted for an Ulster identity. In
1978 the figures were 67 per cent and 20 per cent respectively
In 1986, the numbers describing themselves as British stood at
65 per cent (amazingly, in spite of the introduction of the AIA
the previous year) while only a mere 14 per cent described themselves
as having an Ulster identity and 11 per cent opted for the more
neutral 'Northern Ireland'. In 1989, those Protestants describing
themselves as British had risen to 68 per cent with only 10 per
cent defining themselves as 'Ulster' and 16 per cent as 'Northern
Irish', a total of 26 per cent for a regional identity.[68]

An accompanying note for Bruce's conclusion that an Ulster identity
is gaining ground at the expense of the British variant within
Protestant politics displays an alarming methodology:

. . . given that the percentages can vary a great deal according
to just how the question was asked, we are forced to rely rather
on our intuition, and mine is that, while the number of Protestants
who actually want an independent state remains small, the number
who think it might be the only alternative to a united Ireland,
and who are therefore reconciling themselves to it, has increased
over my period of interest in Northern Ireland. [emphasis added]
[69]

Apart from the obvious point that conclusions are arrived at by
virtue of personal whim rather than empirical evidence, Bruce
seems to confuse the cultural concept of an Ulster versus
British identity with the political will to consider independence
in a doomsday situation. As this chapter has illustrated, these
concepts overlap, with members of the DUP and UUP who espouse
a commitment to essentially British identities also being willing
to consider independence as a last resort. The bar-room bravado
in which such sentiments are often uttered may dissipate when
the practical realities become obvious, but if it came to it,
this alternative would be undertaken by most unionists with a
heavy heart. Few would look positively upon it as the achievement
of a cultural objective.

This should be understood as defining those unionists whose politics
are motivated by easily quantifiable criteria, for example an
identification with the institutions and declared philosophy of
British parliamentary democracy, an assessment of the most beneficial
economic model for Northern Ireland, or a cultural empathy with
British sport, arts and media. Such unionists rarely carry around
the same amount of weighty historical, religious or cultural baggage
as their ethno-nationalist colleagues and generally place their
regional identity within a Greater British context.

An alternative explanation to Bruce's religious reductionism has
been provided by Sarah Nelson with the suggestion that the dynamic
within unionism in the 1970s was class based.. 'Class tensions
and resentment within the Protestant community began to be openly
expressed, and the Civil Rights slogan "Fifty years of unionist
misrule" was increasingly heard from the lips of working
class loyalists.[70]

Clifford Smyth has pointed out that opposition to the Ulster Unionist
Party could not be explained in class terms alone, as illustrated
by Ernest Baird and Reg Empey, former members of the pseudo-paramilitary
Vanguard Party,[71] both of whom were vigorous in their criticisms
of mainstream unionism but were also prosperous businessmen.[72]
In more recent times David Trimble, now the leader of the UUP
and formerly a founder member of the Ulster Clubs[73] and the
Vanguard Party, embodies the capacity of radical unionism to cross
class barriers. When questioned, for example, about what he regarded
as being the central principles of unionism, his response intimated
that the Union was a strategic political allegiance (by definition
conditional) of Ulster Protestants to a community with which they
shared a psychological and cultural affinity.

I suppose one does put the Union pretty high up, but one doesn't
say that the Union is an absolute end in itself. I regard unionism
as being an all-class political alliance, of the Ulster British
people, formed for the purpose of defending their position within
the Union. But the Union is seen as the best political vehicle
for the development in social, economic and political terms, of
the Ulster British people.[74]

When pressed as to whether he saw the Union in terms of a political
rather than a cultural allegiance, Trimble replied that, while
there was a strong cultural cohesion which sustained the Union,
this could not be relied upon indefinitely and thus other political
structures may have to be contemplated outside the present constitutional
arrangements to preserve the politico-cultural hegemony of the
unionist community.

It's both [political and cultural]. It is cultural, I mean
it's obviously cultural because the British community here do
feel themselves to be cultural in all respects, in virtually all
respects in that sense British, so there is a very strong cultural
affinity, and there are the political and economic things as well.
The only reason why I put a question-mark against the Union is
because one knows that a union requires two parties, and that
if the English - and I am using the word English deliberately
- if the English should decide to say, 'well that is all very
well, you feeling yourselves to be British, all your history and
background and all the rest, that is all very well, but frankly
we don't want the Union anymore and we want to end it' . . . in
that case we would say that we cannot unilaterally sustain the
Union, and so one has to say that there is, in the last analysis,
another goal, which is to find some other political structure
as a means of advancing the well-being and continuing existence
of the Ulster British people.[75]

Again we can observe in Trimble's definition of unionism a defensive
mentality which emanates from the realisation that the state to
which he gives his allegiance, the UK, is at best ambivalent about
its desire to maintain the relationship. The fear that the state
to which they express a loyalty (with varying degrees of conditionality)
does not accept them as wholly legitimate members of that state
has encouraged a separatist culture within the unionist community.

Perhaps the ultimate example of secular rationalism is to be found
within the cross-community Alliance Party, where the concerns
of an ethno-Ulster nationalist culture are clearly of little relevance.
Alliance is at the outer limits of the ideology and the opposite
pole to those who inhabit the most extreme recesses of unionist
ethno-nationalism. Recognising this fact I asked the party leader,
Dr John Alderdice, if he would define Alliance as being a unionist
party in the traditional sense.

No, I wouldn't. it certainly is a party which currently takes
a pro-Union position, that is to say that we believe that the
best social and economic interests of the people of Northern Ireland
are served by remaining within the United Kingdom. . . . But remaining
within the United Kingdom is not some article of faith for us.
In other words, if it became clear that the best social and economic
interests of the people of Northern Ireland would be served by
another arrangement, and that was something that we felt and that
the people of Northern Ireland felt, then we would [look at] the
political dispensation, whether that was to a united Ireland or
a region within a Europe of the Regions or whatever. That's not
an issue or a problem from our point of view. But we feel that
at this point it is quite clear that the best interests are served
by remaining within the UK.[76]

When Alderdice was asked if he would distinguish Alliance from
the other unionist parties on the basis that, while they would
have, to varying degrees, a cultural identification with the Union,
his party made a purely pragmatic assessment which was devoid
of sentiment, he ironically used a historical analogy to clarify
his position.

Well, pragmatism, yes, is a very important part of it but
there are certain political principles involved too. I mean if
you go back to Northern Ireland coming into being, you had essentially
three groups of people. You had Conservatives and Unionists, who
wanted the Union to be maintained and that meant no devolution,
it meant a centralised form of government and so on. Then you
had nationalists, who at the end of the day wanted Ireland as
a whole to leave the United Kingdom and be a separate independent
republic. Then you had liberals, and the liberal view was for
Home Rule, the term devolution is the one that we use now. So,
if there had been an Alliance Party then it would have been saying:
'we want Home Rule on a power-sharing basis within the United
Kingdom' .[77]

Notwithstanding the assertions of Alderdice that his party was
temperamentally neutral on the Union, many within the nationalist
community in Northern Ireland would view them as 'unionists with
breeding', those people whom the wife of the former Cabinet minister
Alan Clark referred to, in a separate context entirely, as coming
'from above stairs'. While this may be an unfair assessment and
an inaccurate caricature of the party, it would not be the first
time that communal stereotyping fashioned political attitudes
within Northern Ireland. In a final attempt to get to the bottom
of the precise position of Alliance within the secular-rationalist
strand of unionism, Alderdice was asked if his party had a particular
cultural outlook on the Union as opposed to the political definition
he had provided. Aside from adhering for the moment to the political
institutions of the British state, did Alliance have any cultural
position on the Union which would exhibit a bond not reflected
in their attitudes towards the Southern Irish state?

That's not a Particular issue for us. We are in this state
at present and therefore there's a commitment to the institutions
of the state within which we are. If we were part of a united
Ireland our commitment would be to the institutions of that state.
We are loyal to whatever state we are a part of at that time.
[78 ]

This response is important. Here we have the distinction between
those on the periphery of the ideology and those at the centre.
While members of the Alliance Party may define their loyalty as
the exercise of real politik, a formal addendum to the
political reality they happen to find themselves in, unionists
who are wholly a part of the ideology see this as central. Which
state they belong to is the starting point from which all else
is to be understood and synthesised rather than a footnote. Unlike
Alderdice, their loyalty is non-transferable, and the feeling
that they are going to be delivered from one state to another
state has, in extreme cases, led to violent confrontations with
the state to which they claim to be loyal.

Contractarianism defines unionism as an ethnic group whose relationship
with the rest of the United Kingdom is a quirk of historical development
and has become a cold legalistic agreement where loyalty to the
state is conditional upon adequate behaviour by the executive.
Statehood is a definition of unionism which rejects the idea that
its adherents are motivated by narrow criteria of nationhood such
as identity, religion, colour, race and cultural symbolism; rather
they are organised around a commitment to the preservation and
enhancement of liberal democratic structures and values, which
only states can provide and nations destroy.

David Miller's account of the dynamics of unionism is rooted in
a historical perspective and remains one of the most provocative
(if rather outdated) works on the ideology to date.[79] The propensity
within radical Protestant politics to illustrate the conditional
nature of their loyalty is central to Miller's thesis and requires
detailed examination as this provides further evidence of the
regressive nature of the unionist ideology. Miller prefaces Queen's
Rebels by quoting Robert Bradford as presumably the personification
of conditional loyalty: 'The time might come when Ulstermen would
have to become Queen's rebels in order to remain citizens of any
kind.'[80]

While being a convenient means of defying state authority yet
remaining at least nominally loyal to that state, the phenomenon
of conditional loyalty has concrete historical foundations. These
stretch back to the sixteenth-century tradition of public banding,
i.e. entering into 'bands' for mutual protection, which was originally
a response by the gentry to a prolonged spell of weak central
government. The Scottish Kirk entered into such an arrangement
in an attempt to combat the anti-Presbyterian tendencies of the
monarchy. Bands such as the National Covenant of 1638, organised
in opposition to the new prayer book, came to be regarded as tripartite
contracts between God, his people, and the King.[81] It has some
relationship to the democratising nature of the Reformation, the
emphasis on individualism which this engendered, and the liberalism
of the time which stressed man's inherent rationality (as this
would be required to determine when a covenant had been breached).
Miller suggests that loyalty is reduced to a matter of private
ethics, with political obligation being no more than a business
arrangement. in the event, therefore, of the ruler breaking his
side of the bargain, the ruled are absolved of their duty to comply
with his wishes.[82] One of the earliest examples of conditional
loyalty was provided in 1689, when the fortified town of Derry
issued a resolution declaring that the Catholic troops of James
II would not be allowed into the city. As the following statement
indicates, despite blatantly defying the king's authority, they
still viewed him as their legitimate sovereign.

That as we have resolved to stand upon our guard and defend
our walls, and not to admit of any Papist whatsoever to quarter
among us, so we have firmly and sincerely determined to persevere
in our duty and loyalty to our sovereign Lord the King, without
the least umbrage of mutiny or seditious opposition to his royal
commands . . . God Save The King.[83]

This emphasis on religious distinction is of central importance
to the conditional nature of radical Protestant politics, and
provides evidence to support the argument that 'loyalty' to Britain
is given for so long as it sanctions the existence of the 'Protestant
nation'. The cultural heritage of many radical unionists is not
therefore seen in terms of their position as a colony of the British
Empire, or as a member of the Commonwealth. Theirs is a separatist
culture, reminiscent (in their eyes) of the value system of nineteenth-century
Britain, but one which in reality bears little relation to the
secular Britain of today. In Miller's analysis, one of the key
elements of this culture is the Protestant religion, as it serves
to identify those who subscribe to the group and provides a useful
regenerative function. For those who understand their culture
in terms of their religion, any hint of a threat to the dominance
of the latter amounts to an attack upon their cultural identity.
An interesting corollary may be observed between this view and
the emphasis placed by Patrick Pearse upon the Gaelic revival.
Pearse argued that the cultural struggle was pre-eminent in the
fight for national independence, as without the Irish language
and Irish customs it would be impossible to identify a separate
nation and this would reduce the need for separate political structures.
In the same way, many unionists have argued that a dilution of
Protestantism will reduce Northern Ireland's claim to be culturally
distinct from the rest of Ireland. This is why many unionists
emphasise their religion when discussing their cultural identity,
and point out that loyalty is dependent upon the preservation
of Protestantism in Britain, as only then can it be guaranteed
in Northern Ireland. This sentiment was expressed in 1976 by George
Graham, a former DUP Assemblyman, when he declared that:

My loyalty is to the British Throne being Protestant. I have
no loyalty to any Westminster government. I have no loyalty to
a government which prorogued a democratically elected government,
destroyed our security forces, and left us prey to the IRA. Nor
have I a loyalty to a British government going over the heads
of our people, conniving and double-dealing behind our backs with
a foreign government.[84]

From Miller's perspective, therefore, the conditional aspect of
Ulster loyalism is the greatest paradox within the ideology. He
argues that their interpretation of Britishness was not a patriotic
nationalistic sentiment, nor a sense of community with the people
of Great Britain. In essence it was a loyalty to the monarch and
constitution for as long as they guarded the rights of the loyal
Ulster people. Paul Arthur and Keith Jeffery largely concur with
Miller's analysis, commenting that the powerful loyalist tradition
of 'public banding' is based in a lack of confidence in Britain's
determination to sustain the Union.[85] It was precisely this
belief, for instance, which led William Craig, a former unionist
Cabinet minister, to comment after the demise of Stormont in 1972
that the Ulster loyalists were an 'old and historic community'
for whom the Union with Britain had never been an end in itself
but '. . . was always a means of preserving Ulster's British tradition
and the identity of her Loyalist people'.[86] Loyalty therefore
to this tradition in unionism meant a primary identification with
the people and territory of Northern Ireland, rather than with
those within the United Kingdom as a whole. As a consequence of
this isolationist perspective, some radical unionists tend to
embrace the cultural identity of the Ulster Protestant in its
rawest and most mythical form, namely through the Orange Order
and fundamentalist religion. The folk heros within this band of
radical unionism are the defenders of the faith and the preservers
of the culture such as William of Orange, Rev. George Walker,
and Rev. Henry Cooke. The isolationism within this strand of unionism
has produced a curious mixture of insecurity and complacency,
which has generally resulted in political stagnation. The eternal
fear of being abandoned by Britain and delivered into the joint
clutches of Dublin and Rome has been accompanied within radical
unionism by the belief that the nature of the forces ranged against
them have remained constant. The certainties provided by doctrinaire
theology were translated into the political sphere, the result
being that traditional assumptions were not questioned, changing
political circumstances were not recognised, and the unionist
ideology did not learn to adapt or innovate to meet the volatile
political environment of twentieth-century Britain.

John Taylor, deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, commented
upon this weakness within unionism, arguing that the assumption
of his more radical colleagues within the DUP that the Union was
a one-way relationship had been detrimental to unionist political
fortunes as their behaviour had alienated the other partner in
the relationship. When Taylor was asked if he shared Miller's
view that a social contract existed between Britain and Northern
Ireland, he disagreed, preferring the more organic analogy of
both communities being contained within the same family than the
cold legalistic one of an arrangement between separate parties.

Oh, it is not a social contract, it is like a marriage certificate.
Any marriage requires two partners, and if one partner opts out,
the thing collapses. The United Kingdom is made up of a partnership
between Great Britain and Northern Ireland - after all, that is
what it even says on our passports, the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is not part of
Great Britain but it is part of the United Kingdom - and for that
partnership to survive, it isn't simply dependent on people in
Northern Ireland voting unionist or being pro-British, it also
depends on those who live in Great Britain wanting to retain the
partnership. So it's a two-way operation and not just one-way
I think that is a great weakness in the unionist family here in
Northern Ireland, that they seem to think that so long as they
are strongly pro-British here, everything is well, but in fact
that is a very blind approach to the real basis of the relationship.
The basis of the relationship does depend on the unionists of
Northern Ireland having public support in Great Britain as well.[87]

From this perspective, the tendency within radical sections of
the unionist community has been not only to misread the basis
of the relationship between Britain and 'Ulster', but also to
fail to understand the antipathy felt towards them in the rest
of the UK and to look to the past when dealing with crises of
the present. The political tactics of Ian Paisley, for example,
have often mirrored those of Sir Edward Carson (though with less
success) in the latter's opposition to Home Rule, with the repetition
of the 'Carson Trail Rallies', the establishment of the 'Third
Force' mimicking the formation of the 'Ulster Volunteer Force'
and, after the AIA, a repeat of Carson's 'Solemn League and Covenant'
of 1912.

In essence, therefore, the unionist identity crisis is derived
from their unilateral declaration of 'love' for the 'mother country'
which has never been fully reciprocated. Commenting retrospectively
on the period, Garret FitzGerald argued that this 'sense of being
besieged', the fear of their external environment, led to a culture
of political irrationality within the unionist community, which
was emphasised in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

The fact is that there is a reason for the unionist attitude,
and it is that they have felt under threat from the beginning.
They have never felt that the threat has gone away They have misperceived
it at some times possibly, but once people feel under threat,
reason goes out the window, and they have found it impossible
to identify their interests and to pursue them, by virtue of all
the time reacting simply negatively against a perceived threat,
sometimes in existence, sometimes not. That can happen to any
group; I mean the Israelis are also a bit irrational at times
and don't necessarily pursue their own interests, or even identify
them in the long run. Fear is a great destabiliser for rationality.[88]

It was realisation of the fact that they were 'unwanted children'
which diminished the trust of the unionist community in the country
to which they gave their allegiance. David Trimble personifies
this belief that the Britishness of Northern Ireland is not an
objective reality but is subject to the whim of fickle politicians
in Westminster.

I regard myself as a unionist who is aware of the fact that
I cannot unilaterally insist that the Union be continued, that
there might be - there are not yet, I don't actually ever think
there ever will be, but one has to acknowledge the possibility
that there will be - circumstances where the other party to the
Union would wish unilaterally to end it.[89]

This statement ties in with Miller's perception that the unionism
of Protestant Ulster was never a feeling of cultural 'oneness'
with the Greater British community, but a tactical political alliance.
This was not however an allegiance to the British state, to its
parliament, or even to its monarch, but to those constitutional
arrangements which were vital to the maintenance of the Ulster
Protestant way of life. The basis of the Union, therefore, was
a contract between two separate parties, and not an internal agreement
between members of the one family. In essence, this definition
of the Union was supported by David Trimble, who emphasised not
that unionists were simply a section of the United Kingdom separated
by geography, but rather that they were a specific cultural community
where loyalty to Britain was granted on a de facto basis,
rather than Northern Ireland belonging in a de jure manner
to the UK.

Yes, there is a sort of contract relationship. I'm sure you
have read David Miller's book . . . I don't agree with all of
Miller's book but I think it is quite interesting. But the idea
of a covenant - I use that word instead of contract - is of course
very very central to Presbyterian theological thinking, and a
lot of people's political thought - it is true here, it has been
true elsewhere as well - is closely related to their theology.[90]

As Miller has pointed out, the problem with perceiving loyalty
to the state in contractarian terms lay in its subjective interpretations.
The forces of modernisation had resulted in political change to
the extent that sovereignty was no longer vested in a single person,
the monarch, but was now replaced by a parliament responsible
to the people. Ironically therefore the liberal-democratic institutions
which Ulster Protestants placed so much emphasis upon augmented
their feelings of insecurity and contributed to their isolationist
political culture.

The people are fickle, and it is a fundamental feature of
the British Constitution that parliament is incapable of giving
binding promises: any law enacted by one parliament can be repealed
by the next. . . . The Parliament Act forced upon the consciousness
of Ulster Protestants the fact that they could find reassurance
of their fundamental rights neither in a felt sense of co-nationality
with any people - British or Irish - nor in the capacity of British
institutions to give promises which came up to their own exacting
standards of honesty.[91]

The endemic (and not unjustified) paranoia of the unionist community
which emanates from constitutional uncertainty has highlighted
the conditional nature of their loyalty, as their obedience is
based upon a two-way relationship, a social contract or covenant
with the government. The following statement by Ian Paisley in
the Protestant Telegraph could be cited in support of the
contractarian thesis: 'Government is not a one-way street. It
is a civil contract in which each party has a duty.'[92] The belief
that the Union is founded upon a contract (at least from the unionist
perspective) rather than mutual trust and cultural commonality
has fed the virus of political insecurity within unionism. It
has produced frequent declarations that the actions of the 'mother
country' have jeopardised the position of the Ulster Protestant
community and so broken the contract between the rulers and the
ruled, thus legitimating unconstitutional behaviour.

However, though intellectually more diverting than Bruce's one-dimensional
characterisation of Ulster unionism, this theoretical edifice
is built upon foundations which are just as shaky. The main problem
with Miller's contractarian theory is its negation of unionism's
cultural identification with Britain, even if this is largely
a one-way unreciprocated relationship to a mythical British community
which owes more to Kipling's Britishness than to the multicultural
Britain of the late twentieth century. It is rather too mechanistic
to simply interpret the dynamics of unionism as the autonomous
exercise of political self-interest grounded in pseudo-legality.
Ian Paisley Jnr's response when asked about the central principles
of unionism provides a classic example and demonstrates the complex
pattern within the unionist fabric of allegiance.

Number one, I believe in the principles of the Union, those
principles being that the Union is best for everyone; that it
offers and facilitates everybody's cultural, political and economic
outlook better than any other option that appears to be available.
Therefore I'm a unionist for practical reasons. But I'm also a
unionist for very emotional reasons as well. My whole cultural/political
philosophy I think is based in a very, not only nostalgic idea
of what the past means, but also a very profound identity with
the principles of Protestantism, with the principles of freedom,
with the principles of civil and religious liberty and all those
things which I think make up the cross-mix which is both a Protestant
identity and indeed then a unionist political identity. [93]

It is undoubtedly the case that many unionists, especially (to
use Todd's classification) in the Ulster British tradition, do
regard themselves as having a close social and cultural affinity
with the rest of Britain. Many unionists would regard themselves
as being British in the manner of the Scottish or Welsh, with
a subordinate regional loyalty to Northern Ireland, and they feel
hurt that this is not accepted by the ruling elite at Westminster.
Sammy Wilson, for instance, sees no reason why constitutional
arrangements cannot be established in Northern Ireland similar
to those in other regions of the UK, taking account of the regional
differences between Northern Ireland and the 'mainland' while
allowing for the devolution of specific responsibilities.

The first principle of my unionism is that I want to remain
part of the United Kingdom. That is the bedrock of my belief.
But, I believe that there is wide diversity within the United
Kingdom, and I am not just talking about the diversity between
Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. It is now
quite apparent that the Scots feel the same, the Welsh feel the
same, even people in the North of England feel the same, and therefore
the kind of unionism that I would want to see would allow for
an expression of that diversity, and allow for some kind of institutional
expression of the diversity as well. It would therefore be bolstered
by a devolved - I'll call it an institution, I don't want to call
it a parliament, some people would think that is too grandiose
- but some devolved institution here in Northern Ireland, that
would have real decision-making powers which would reflect, first
of all, the wishes of people in Northern Ireland, and the particular
flavour of politics here in Northern Ireland.[94]

However, it is clear that the status of Northern Ireland within
the United Kingdom is not the same as that of Scotland or Wales.
This has nothing to do with the legal niceties of the situation
or any ceding of sovereignty occasioned by Britain's signing of
the Anglo-lrish Agreement, but is rooted in cultural and historical
factors. Miller has pointed out that Northern Ireland's position
within the UK is not comparable with that of Scotland or Wales,
due to its isolationist political culture. The Ulster Protestant
community 'has evoked a kind of group loyalty incompatible with
acceptance of the full implications of British nationality'.[95]
Miller determined that it was the forces of modernisation and
economic progress which were the root cause of the differences
between Northern Ireland's relationship with England, and that
of Scotland and Wales.

Despite its many advantages as a political theory of unionism,
Miller's thesis presents hypotheses which do not always correlate
with the reality of unionist Motivations. In his examination of
the Home Rule period, for example, he States that unionists did
not feel a cultural affinity with the rest of the UK.

The dilemma of the Ulster Protestant community derived from
both their conception of political obligation and their rights
of citizenship in contractual terms. Lacking a genuine feeling
of co-nationality with the British people, they could not entrust
their fate to 'safeguards' which depended on the willingness of
that people to intervene in Irish affairs to rectify abuses. [96]

In his contention that unionists lacked 'a genuine feeling of
co-nationality with the British people', Miller seems to be confusing
objective fact with the perceived reality of the situation from
the unionist point of view. He may be correct in his assertion
that a common culture did not exist between the unionists and
the English; however this was not reflected in contemporary unionist
feelings (however irrationally such feelings were arrived at).
The fact was that unionists did feel as much a part of
the empire (and thus by extension part of a mythical British nation)
as did the English during the Home Rule period and they still
do to a large degree. It is unlikely for instance that they would
have volunteered for slaughter at the Somme had they not felt
themselves to be an intrinsic part of the empire, or not felt
a strong cultural affinity with the 'mother country'. The unionist
perception of the First World War was that it was a fight to preserve
civilisation and the British Empire, their empire. This does not
presuppose, of course, that their perception was an accurate one,
or that they were accepted as being an integral part of the empire
by its other constituent parts or within the 'mother country'
itself. Tom Hennessey, writing about Ulster unioniist identity
at the end of the nineteenth century, substantiates this point.

As in Great Britain, Ulster unionists, and Irish unionists
in general, consistently defined themselves as being part of a
British national community sharing a specifically British historical
heritage. . . . The British imperial experience, that 'consciousness
of great shared events' which created a communal myth of national
identity, was apparent throughout unionist rhetoric at this time.[97]

Coulter casts a healthily sceptical eye over Miller's thesis and
finds it wanting in several respects. He challenges Miller's claim
that the contractarian element within unionist political thought
is anachronistic in the modern liberal-democratic polity. Western
society has not, in Coulter's analysis,

. . . resolved to the satisfaction of its citizenry those
vital constitutional issues that pertain to the nature and limits
of government and of political obligation. . . . The modern liberal
democratic state has, in reality, proved incapable of satisfactorily
resolving the problematic matter of the relationship between government
and governed. Indeed, far from having been rendered obsolete,
such issues of citizenship have in fact returned to the centre
stage of political debate in recent times.[98]

Miller is seen as putting the theoretical cart before the horse.
The oddity about the unionist-British relationship is not that
Ulster unionists have erected conditions to their loyalty which
find expression in periodic demonstrations of defiance against
state authority. The anomaly is instead presented to be the conditional
loyalty of successive British governments to the concept of the
Union and to the unionist community in Northern Ireland. The kernel
of Coulter's argument is that it was Britain's historic inability
to provide an unequivocal definition of Northern Ireland's constitutional
status which fashioned the supposed deviance of unionist political
behaviour.

In view of the uncertainty that shrouds the constitutional
future of Northern Ireland within the Union, it would seem both
rational and inevitable that the unionist community should have
remained so profoundly concerned with constitutional matters.
. . . Suspecting that the intentions of Westminster regarding
the Union are far from pure, the unionist community has inevitably
withheld from the government its unqualified consent, as to do
otherwise would place it in a singularly vulnerable position.[99]

For Coulter, therefore, the contractarian element in modern unionism
is a rational and salient political tactic, a behavioural trait
fashioned out of an antagonistic political environment, whereas
for Miller it is a structural residue of unionism's historical
evolution and 'Ulster's' unique economic development, which has
served ever since to poison their relationship with the 'mother
country'.

A full-scale assault on Miller's assumptions was launched by Arthur
Aughey, who declared that his interpretation

. . . chooses the wrong foundation upon which to build, and
is therefore substantially misconceived. It constructs an argument
on grounds congenial to nationalism, and so it is not surprising
that unionism appears woefully inadequate as a political doctrine.[100]

Aughey's critique of Miller asserts that the crisis within unionism
does not revolve around the anomaly of conflicting identities,
but is rather a consequence of the British government's insistence
on denying them the democratic rights of statehood and the basic
right to participate in the political process. What Miller sees
as an identity crisis fashioned out of cultural confusion, Aughey
represents as a product of stunted political development born
out of the Government of Ireland Act and the establishment of
a regional administration in Northern Ireland. Aughey takes issue
with Miller's articulation of conditional loyalty, arguing that
it is the definition of a political absolute which does not exist.

If conditional loyalty is at the centre of political behaviour,
Miller has left one major question unanswered in his exposition:
namely, what is unconditional loyalty? Of course, he cannot really
answer this question for it falls into that category of absolutes
which is outside the scope of politics.[101]

Of course the point Aughey is making here, namely that nobody's
loyalty to the state is unconditional, is a valid one,[102] and
he cites the example of militant republicanism as evidence of
this fact. The IRA in this analysis are manifestly not loyal to
the existing Irish nation, but to an idealised version of it which
does not yet exist. However, Aughey's use of this example to support
his argument illustrates a misunderstanding of Irish republicanism,
as unlike the unionists, they do not accept the Government of
Ireland Act, republicans do not accept the partition of Ireland
and they do not accept what is legally termed the Republic of
Ireland to be the 'Irish nation'. This belief that the state is
not a complete manifestation of the Irish nation is recognised
by the constitution and thus, in theory at least, by the state
itself. It is not a case therefore, as Aughey suggests, of militant
republicans giving conditional loyalty to the government of the
twenty-six counties; they do not give any loyalty to it at all,
although they do accept it as a de facto if not de jure
reality. It could perhaps be said in Aughey's defence that regardless
of a nation-state's cultural homogeneity, there comes a point
when citizens will decide either individually or collectively
to withdraw their loyalty to the government or sovereign.

The Obligation of Subjects to the Sovereign, is understood
to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth, by which
he is able to protect them. For the right men have by Nature to
protect themselves, when none else can protect them, can by no
Covenant be relinquished. . . . The end of Obedience is Protection.[103]

Thomas Hobbes did not design this covenant with the unionists
in mind, but commented that everyone had the right to withdraw
their loyalty to the state in the last resort (in this case during
a period of life-threatening political instability). Aughey is
therefore correct in his assertion that the observation of social
contracts and covenants between the rulers and the ruled was not
the unique preoccupation of the unionist community. The riots
which occurred in Britain's inner cities in the early 1980s would
testify to the fact that unionists were not alone in their propensity
to exhibit conditional loyalty to the state should sufficient
alienation occur between the government and the governed. However,
despite Aughey's objections to Miller's thesis and his declaration
that unionism 'is no more conditional in its loyalty than any
other rational political doctrine',[104] it could justifiably
be claimed that the ambiguity of unionist loyalty to the state
is pronounced to an unusual degree. Aughey's view that the loyalty
of everyone is conditional is not shared by Enoch Powell for example,
who points out the anomaly of seeking to belong to a particular
state while refusing to obey the laws of that state. When asked
to comment upon the legitimacy of the unionist campaign of civil
disobedience against the AIA, Powell declared that a prerequisite
of citizenship of a particular state was the acceptance of and
obedience to the legitimately made laws of that state, regardless
of how unpalatable these laws were considered to be. Powell argued
that whilst a case could be made for unlawful protest action against
legislation which had been influenced by the Dublin government
through the AIA,

. . . you then get yourself into the great difficulty, that,
claiming to be part of a country, you reject its law, and also
you get into the difficulty of picking and choosing between one
law and another, and saying, 'now is this law a consequence of,
or in any way influenced by the Anglo-lrish Agreement, or isn't
it?' Now I can see that the law on public order [Public Order
Act 1987] was professedly influenced by the Anglo-lrish Agreement,
but still there is the difficulty of claiming to belong to a state
and not obeying its laws. . . . My view was that the law was still
binding, and that if one claimed to belong to the United Kingdom,
one was admitting that one was still bound by the law of the United
Kingdom.[105]

Powell's contention that the individual owed a loyalty to the
legislative institutions of the state to which they gave allegiance
stands at variance, however, with more radical sentiments within
the Ulster Unionist Party. David Trimble, for instance, rejects
the dictum of parliamentary sovereignty, arguing that such fundamental
concepts could not be institutionalised in such a manner.

I've never actually personally subscribed to the view that
parliament is absolutely sovereign. . . . I have always regarded
sovereignty at the end of the day, as resting in the people, and
parliament just happens to be the present central institution
within our constitution.[106]

When it was put to him that the loyalty of some unionists to Britain
was dependent upon the monarch remaining Protestant, Trimble went
on to assert that conditional loyalty was not an anachronism,
but evidence of a liberal-democratic polity:

I'm not sure that the people who say that they are loyal to
the monarch so long as it's a Protestant have actually thought
the matter through, although what they are saying is strictly
speaking accurate. That is the Act of Settlement, and people here
who celebrate the Glorious Revolution are very deeply conscious
of the fact that loyalty is conditional. That is the bedrock of
the British constitution, there is no unconditional loyalty, but
loyalty is conditional. . . . I mean otherwise we simply wouldn't
be a democratic state at all. [107]

Aughey's dismissal of Miller's conditional loyalty thesis as the
product of a false premise, a concern with the nation rather than
the state, was accompanied by an attempt to provide unionism with
a new coherence. The starting point for his more positive critique
came with the suggestion that the central dynamics of the ideology
have been misinterpreted by academics who mistakenly understand
unionism in terms of nationalist criteria. Aughey rejects Terence
Brown's assertion that unionism suffers from an impoverished identity,
lacking the 'complex, rich, emotional identity' of nationalism.[108]
His point is that to measure unionism against nationalism will
inevitably result in misunderstanding as the two ideologies are
fundamentally different in nature: '. . . the point is that unionism
does not claim to be an entire philosophy of life but a rational
political idea. To criticise it in such terms is to do so according
to the assumptions of nationalism.[109]

What Aughey does not mention is that unionist demands for the
preservation of the Union have been substantially based (in recent
years at least) on the argument that they are a culturally distinct
community from the rest of Ireland. As Garret FitzGerald remarked,
'. . . they try to have it both ways, both in and out of the UK'.[110]
Unionists do not simply declare that they have a political allegiance
to Britain, but maintain that this is based on the desire to preserve
the distinctive cultural and religious heritage of unionism. 'The
average Loyalist today would state without hesitation that his
first loyalty was to Ulster rather than to the United Kingdom
parliament.'[111] In a similar vein, Sarah Nelson quotes a former
unionist councillor as saying that unionism for him was about
preserving the distinctness of Northern Ireland, rather than integrating
it into the UK.

I joined the party from a love of Ulster, its customs, character
and heritage. Unionism to me always meant 'Ulster first'. This
I felt was the true unionism in the tradition of Carson and Craig.
Our leaders were weak allowing Britain to interfere when it was
clear they had lost any loyalty to Ulster.[112]

It could of course be pointed out that this speaker totally misunderstands
both the political philosophy of Edward Carson and the balance
of power between London and Belfast. Carson in fact disliked many
of Ulster's local characteristics and particularly the culture
of Orangeism, their speeches reminding him of 'the unrolling of
a mummy. All old bones and rotten rags.' The point is, however,
this is a perception of identity widely held within the unionist
community. As there is no law of political motion which declares
that the depth of a person's beliefs is directly related to the
rationality by which they are reached, the important factor to
consider when discussing perceptions of identity is not intellectual
coherence so much as the degree of consensus. Aughey rejects the
contemporary orthodoxy that the unionist ideology is handicapped
by a crisis of identity, this too being the product of nationalist
misrepresentation. He quotes the following response of a loyalist
bandsman, questioned by New Society about his identity, but reinterprets
the message to deny the identity crisis thesis.

Well, I'd like to call myself British, a British person like.
But you look deep into it like, I'm Irish . . . because Northern
Ireland like. You don't hear the English going round and saying,
'I'm British'. They'd turn round and say 'I'm English' . . . like
the Scottish I'd like to classify myself as a British person -
if anybody asks me my nationality I'd turn round an' say, 'British'
. . . I hate calling myself Irish, myself like . . . but it's
a thing you have to face up to. It's the truth, you look at yourself,
you're living on one island.[113]

Rather than accept the apparently obvious explanation that this
individual is profoundly confused about his identity, Aughey chooses
to depict the bandsman as a latter-day Platonic philosopher-king,
who exhibits

. . . a profound modern political wisdom - a wisdom which
the identity-advocates ignore or are simply unable to recognise.
For the confusion, such as it is, appears not to lie in the stumbling
formulations of unionism but in the narrow perversity of the whole
idea of the politics of identity.[114]

Aughey concludes that unionists are more interested in statehood
than in nationhood. Their preoccupation is not to psychoanalyse
themselves as nationalists do, in terms of cultural 'oneness'
or diversity using the cultural totems of language, religion,
etc.; the concern of unionists is primarily to integrate themselves
into the modern British state. 'The identity of unionism has little
to do with the idea of the nation and everything to do with the
idea of the state.'[115] Having established that the unionist
community is more interested in belonging to a state than a nation
(despite evidence to the contrary as expressed through the Orange
Order et al.), Aughey goes on to argue that states are not based
on concepts of nationhood and do not, in fact, 'depend upon any
form of substantive identity at all'. The modern state, he says,
'has transcended its dependence on extrinsic legitimations such
as race, nation or religion, and is grounded in the political
universals of right and the rule of law'.[116] Historian James
Loughlin correctly points to the practical deficiencies in Aughey's
theoretical conception of the state as an underpinning dynamic
within unionist politics.

[The] notion that the state can be conceptualised in terms
of the political universals of 'right and the rule of law', abstracted
from the emotions of nationalism, is not very convincing. indeed,
while Aughey notes that Robert McCartney employed the Union Jack
in his campaign literature at the general election of June 1987,
'against his better judgement', its use in this context is instructive.
It is impossible to dissociate the national flag from notions
of national identity and it is impossible to imagine the state
without also imagining the national flag.[117]

In his desire to rationalise the equal citizenship argument, Aughey
rather misses the point that states and nations are intrinsically
linked to one another and in a time of crisis the nation will
prove to be a much stronger social coagulant than the state. The
break-up of the Soviet Union could be cited as supporting evidence
here, as the various factions which previously made up that political
unit are not organising around the 'Holy Grail' of liberal democracy
instead, old nationalities which had been submerged within the
state for seventy years have re-emerged in their original form,
dusted themselves down, and are prepared to protect the interests
of what they define as their nation. The war in the former Yugoslavia
is another obvious example. Here, ethno-nationalist antagonism,
which had remained relatively dormant during the Cold War and
under Tito, has re-emerged from hibernation, and the Serbs, Croats
and Muslims continue to define themselves and their enemies in
terms of their ethnicity and how this interacts with their shared
history. While Aughey is correct to point out that states are
political rather than cultural arrangements, he fails to mention
that more often than not it is the forces of nationality, language,
colour, religion, history and social cohesion due to threat from
external enemies which bind the state together. In other words,
are states not simply the political manifestations of nations,
groups of nations, or parts of nations? As Emerson noted, the
nation '. . . has in fact become the body which legitimises the
state'.[118] States certainly do not exist (as Aughey suggests)
as a result of liberal democracy - indeed, a significant number
of these geographical units known as states studiously ignore
concepts such as the 'political universals of right and the rule
of law'.

In reality, many unionists exhibit a concern with identity/culture
rather than merely an abstract desire for citizenship and liberal-democratic
principles. Regardless of how benign the Irish Republic becomes
or the extent to which it liberalises its social policies, unionists
are unlikely to seek citizenship of it. As this chapter has demonstrated,
unionism is not based solely upon rationalism, or on political,
social and economic self-interest. At its most fundamental, it
is based on a sense of belonging. In addition to seeing
the Union as a protector of civil liberties, religious expression
and economic well-being, there is a complex web of historical,
emotional and psychological bonds (though these are largely unreciprocated)
which underpin the dynamics of unionist political behaviour.

Two examples will suffice to demonstrate that many unionists are
motivated by exactly the same symbolic forces which drive Irish
nationalism. Consider the reaction to the decision by Queen's
University of Belfast in 1994 to abandon the playing of the British
national anthem at its graduation ceremonies, thus bringing the
institution into line with the practice in the rest of the United
Kingdom. The letters column of the Belfast Telegraph was dominated
by this issue for months afterwards, while a unionist rally was
organised and attended by several leading politicians in an attempt
to pressurise the university to reverse its decision. Obviously
this example of integration with the 'mainland' was not one which
they found to their taste. Consider also the events in Portadown
during the Protestant marching season in July 1995 and specifically
the 'Siege of Drumcree'. The picture of unionists chasing the
RUC across fields was more reminiscent of old-style triumphalism
than democratic citizenship and is difficult to square with the
claim that unionism is essentially motivated by a desire to adhere
to the liberal values enshrined within the British state.

Aughey's concern to differentiate between statehood and nationhood,
illustrated in the following two statements, is motivated out
of a desire to demonstrate that unionists are entitled to equal
citizenship with the rest of the freedom-loving residents of the
United Kingdom.

If the autonomous principle of the modern state is taken to
be right (in the Hegelian sense), then the relevant political
concept is neither religion nor nation but citizenship. The United
Kingdom is a state which, being multi-national and multi-ethnic,
can be understood in terms of citizenship and not substantive
identity (which helps to account for the bandsman's muddle). .
. . The imperial notion of 'civus Britannicus sum' has transformed
itself into the democratic ideal of different nations, different
religions and different colours, all equal citizens under the
one government. It is to this notion that intelligent unionism,
which embraces both protestants and catholics, owes allegiance.
. . . The character of unionism must be understood in terms of
this idea of citizenship; and the longer that protestant unionists
and catholic nationalists are denied local state power, the more
important it becomes as a universal organising political value.[119]
. . . nationality assumptions and notions of loyalty based upon
them rather confuse the motivation of unionist politics. . . .
unionism is concerned primarily with the quality of citizenship
within the Union; it is nationalists who are agitated by ideas
of nationhood and its extent. The political cohesion of the United
Kingdom - its 'identity' if you like - cannot lie in loyalty to
the nation. There is no British nation; there are only British
citizens. Loyalty, if it means anything, must mean loyalty to
the idea of the Union: the willing community of peoples united
not by creed, colour or ethnicity but by recognition of the authority
of that Union. [120]

Whether or not Aughey's various hypotheses carry any validity
(his explanation of the unionist identity crisis, denial of the
peculiarities of unionist conditional loyalty, and differentiation
of nation and state, are not totally convincing), the fact is
that his thesis concerning the dynamics of unionist politics is
not reflected in the political reality of Northern Ireland. Coulter
arrives at a reasonable conclusion.

The essential shortcoming of Aughey's account derives from
his provision of an abstract and idealised characterisation of
unionism that fails to take on board the realities of unionist
motivation and political practice. While the political aspirations
of many unionists may very well stem from their adherence to abstract
ideals of citizenship, they are also motivated by substantive
identities such as nationality and ethnicity Anyone who has ever
witnessed an Orange parade or engaged flesh and blood unionists
in conversation regarding their political beliefs could hardly
draw a different conclusion. . . . The abstract and idealised
interpretation of unionism provided by Arthur Aughey is indicative
of an inconsistency in his approach that bespeaks an ideological
prejudice.[121]

As Coulter rightly points out, whilst Aughey's unionism may be
more about equal citizenship within the UK than the preservation
of some cultural heritage, this could not be said of many others
within the unionist community. For them, intangible concepts such
as 'citizenship' are of secondary importance to the preservation
of their cultural heritage and religion. The Republic of Ireland,
for example, believes in the pantheon of western liberalism, in
citizenship and natural justice, as much as does Britain (for
example, its single transferable vote electoral system is more
democratic in terms of the correlation between votes cast and
seats won than its British counterpart). Yet some unionists are
violently opposed to joining it and this is not simply as a result
of the 1937 constitution and failed efforts to reform it. The
political allegiance of unionism to Britain is not, therefore,
solely based upon a desire to live in a western democracy (when
given the opportunity from 1921 to 1972 unionists built a political
system which was anathema to modern liberal-democratic theory)
but is founded variously upon a wide range of assumptions, from
being the best means of preserving their cultural distinctiveness
from the rest of Ireland to being the optimal strategy for maintaining
the region's economic prosperity.

Aughey defines his own unionism as if it is representative of
the ideology as a whole. It is not. It may be a vision of unionism,
it may be a more effective or legitimate expression of unionism,
but it is not the reality of present experience. The majority
of unionists are concerned about their identity, their
culture, their religion, and their history, as of course are nationalists.
They are not concerned with fitting into the multicultural multiracial
Britain of the late twentieth century. It is not sufficient to
condemn the majority of such unionists as ideological interlopers
who merely hijacked unionism for their own ends. It is too trite
to suggest that the devolution experiment which lasted from the
beginning of the state until 1972 was '. . . not a victory for
unionism., it was a victory for unionists'.[122] In other words
it was led by a small group of sectional interests unable to take
the longer view, aided and abetted by successive British governments.

More recently Aughey has shown signs of a more considered, less
dogmatic, approach, although he comes to similar conclusions.

It may be countered that the interpretation so far is a one-sided
view and does not do full justice to the character of unionism;
that it ignores a deep current of political thought which places
more emphasis upon an 'Ulster identity' than upon British citizenship;
and that this current of thought is indeed separatist, is concerned
to attain an explicit form of self-determination even to the extent
of going for independence. Of course that current does exist and
finds expression in a number of popular ways from bar bravado
to the waving of Ulster flags. And there is no doubt that it is
a legacy of 50 years of unionist government at Stormont. [123]

As this chapter has sought to indicate, there is a significant
degree of 'doubt' that separatist sentiment within the unionist
community was simply the product of the Government of Ireland
Act and the Stormont administration. This strain in unionism,
which Aughey rightly identifies, can be traced much further back
than 1920. The Orange Order, for instance, was established long
before Northern Ireland came into existence and it was not set
up to lobby for liberal-democratic constitutional reform, or as
a sister organisation to anything on the British 'mainland'. The
nearest corollary in fact to the Orange Order in Britain would
be the Freemasons, hardly an example of the British liberal-democratic
polity much alluded to by the equal citizenship lobby. Similarly,
the political by-product of evangelical Protestantism in the nineteenth
century was separatist. The Great Revival of the 1850s fostered
the notion that Ulster Presbyterians were a distinct community
from both Catholic Ireland and Anglican Britain, a notion which,
as we have already seen in this chapter, still prevails today.

John Whyte summed up the weakness of Aughey's critique and the
equal citizenship case as a whole with his comment that the communal
tensions in Northern Ireland transcend political institutions
such as the party structure, and lie rather in the unique cocktail
of its history.

The argument that the main difference between Northern Ireland
and the rest of the United Kingdom lies in their party systems
is not convincing. Nowhere else in the United Kingdom are communal
tensions remotely so severe as they are in Northern Ireland. Nowhere
else does one find the lethal mixture of a large minority with
a well-founded and deeply felt sense of grievance, and a narrow
majority with justifiable anxieties about what the future may
hold. There are nationalists in Scotland and Wales, but they do
not display the bitter sense of injustice felt by nationalists
in Northern Ireland and, apart from a tiny fringe, they do not
resort to violence. There are racial tensions in some English
cities, but these do not call into question the nature of the
State. The truth is that Northern Ireland is different, and the
notion that special institutions are required to meet the contending
needs and aspirations of its two communities is reasonable. [124]

A similar line to Aughey has been taken by Patrick Roche and Brian
Barton, who suggest that unionism has been maligned by the devious
agenda of nationalist ideologues. They condemn Joe Lee's study
(Ireland 1912-1985) as a one-dimensional analysis which
fails to understand the wider complexities of the ideology.

Lee's perception of Ulster unionism is rooted in the most
offensive of nationalist stereotypes: unionism is the political
expression of nothing more commendable than a 'racial imperative'.
Lee's book is an example of a failure to liberate the understanding
of unionism and the politics of Northern Ireland from nationalist
mythology and stereotype. [125]

Roche and Barton seek to redress what they regard as an imbalance
in Irish historiography in favour of the nationalist critique.
'Nationalist ideologues have propagated, with virtual complete
success since the late 1960s, an image of Northern Ireland as
a "failed political entity".[126] The problem with this
analysis is that it suffers from the very disease it ascribes
to nationalist commentaries. The Roche and Barton critique is
littered with phrases such as 'the nationalist argument' and the
'nationalist story', as if there was simply one monolithic perspective
articulated by Irish nationalists. Indeed after one such sweep
of their broad ideological brush, concerning the rationale of
discrimination during the 1920-72 period, they commented that
'according to the nationalist story' discrimination was a conspiracy
to subjugate Catholics, and promptly juxtaposed this with the
views of Michael Farrell on the subject. While Farrell's contribution
to an understanding of the Stormont period should not be underestimated,
it would be fair to say that he occupies one particular strand
of Irish nationalist opinion. Roche and Barton attempt to refute
Farrell's analysis by suggesting that allegations of discrimination
have been grossly exaggerated by nationalist historians. They
cite the comment of the pro-Union economist Tom Wilson that because
no one complained about discrimination the level cannot have been
as high as 'the nationalist story' has subsequently alleged.

In 1970 the Stormont Government appointed a Commissioner of
Complaints and it might have been expected that a large number
of complaints about discrimination in housing would have been
brought before him. . . . There was only one case in which discrimination
was alleged. If discrimination had been as widespread as persistent
republican propaganda has led so many people in Britain and the
Irish Republic to believe, it is inconceivable that only a single
case would have been brought before him.[127]

This is clearly an absurd argument to propagate. Could the same
criteria be used to argue that, as nationalists made little use
of the Police Complaints Board, little opposition existed within
the Catholic community towards the security forces? The existence
of institutional structures such as a housing ombudsman is not
of itself going to provide reliable empirical evidence with which
we can accurately determine the extent of discrimination during
the Stormont regime. It could be argued, for example, that the
low level of complaints from the Catholic community over housing
allocation cited by Wilson demonstrates that alienation amongst
the minority community had reached such a level that they had
lost all faith in the system and were not even availing of the
opportunities which did exist to air their grievances.

Notwithstanding the claims of Wilson, Roche and Barton, and Arthur
Aughey that unionism has been falsely ascribed an identity crisis
by nationalist historians, this is a conspiracy theory which holds
little credibility. It is clear that politico-cultural identity
within unionism is diverse to the point that it defies categorisation.
There is a crisis of identity within the ideology, derived from
the historical inheritance of unionism and the overriding sense
of insecurity which this experience has engendered. The existence
of an antagonistic state on the other part of the island (at times
imagined, at times real) has been gradually accompanied by hostility
to the unionist cause within the country to which unionists express
an allegiance and from the rest of the world.

As this chapter has sought to demonstrate, the desire for unity
fashioned from such insecurity constantly precluded progressive
political behaviour, as the complex assortment of diverse interest
groups and individuals which existed under the ideological canopy
of unionism were unable to develop a coherent political programme.
The fact is that the Union means different things to different
people. Whilst one unionist may regard it, in accordance with
Miller's characterisation, as a contract with Britain to protect
the religio-cultural heritage of Ulster Protestantism, another
might see it as simply another region of the United Kingdom, separated
merely by geography and the unwillingness of successive British
governments to incorporate what Wilfred Spender termed 'North
West Britain' into the rest of the kingdom. These different perceptions
of cultural identity had obvious political consequences, resulting
in conflicting notions about where unionism should be going, and
how its political strategy should develop. The lack of cultural
homogeneity, when combined with the self-imposed structural partition
within unionism and the conflict which accompanies the idiosyncrasies
of human nature, led to intellectual incoherence and political
stagnation. The next chapter will demonstrate the way in which
the diversity of cultural identities in the unionist community
has been reflected in diverging political analyses and conflicting
political strategies within the ideology.